A letter to the next person who holds my heart

Take a trip inside my heart and learn the ways I see us. In my mind we’re almost never talking. Just experiencing things alongside one another while a current flows between us. I want to compare the sizes of our hands in your car at 2am. I want you to drive me home, knowing our silence can hold our secrets. Your eyes drive me crazy. Eye contact is one of my favorite things with you. And if there’s anything better than that it’s watching you while you’re focused. I wonder if you’re allowing me to look at you. I shamelessly take you in and think you must know. I wonder if when you catch my eye it feels like your soul caught fire. If in that moment you can see us years from now working everything out. I’ll dance around at 9am in your boxers lazilly picking up the house while you shower before work. Do you see that like I see that? Would it look as pretty to you as it does to me? Or would your future look nothing like that? Can I see it anyways? Where we go? To sit six feet from you right now I could give anything. Just let our eyes do the talking. My entire body responds to your presence.

This is not a feeling for words. It’s panic and exhilaration and wanting to tackle you before you finish a sentence. It almost makes me mad. Like seriously, shut up. How do you do that to me. It’s perfect agony. But I want time to get used to you. I want to fall asleep looking from inside my eyes to inside yours knowing I'll feel you get up hours before me because you’re weird like that. I want to be comfortably starstruck by you because this feels a bit vulnerable. Normally I cannot stop talking but you probably think I’m so slow because I literally lose brain function when you blink, or yawn. Like sirens in my noggin I swear. I hope it’s like that for you. You have to know I’m strung out on a line for this when all I muster is a grin for a solid five seconds after you finish talking. I am in overdrive, you scare me and challenge me and excite me all at once. You set me on freaking fire.

Watch me look at you and you’ll know how honestly I mean everything I say. To the person who holds my heart, know that if I am passionate for you it is the most dangerous part of me. You’ll not only have my heart, my desires, my motivation. I’ve always been the type of person who gets paralyzed by love. I sit around and wonder about the fire in your eyes, the movement of your fingers, the way you slowly complicate my life. The truth is, you make my chemicals go bonkers. Absolutely haywire. Hold this truth gently. I will break for you, not because of you. When my eyes take rolling trips over your shoulders know that I’m not worshipping your shell. I’m searching for your soul. You are striking. Be careful with me please. I’m all in.

We sat criss cross on the floor of his bedroom. Across from him I watch him drop his pen and look up abruptly. Creasing my eyebrows I meet his gaze.

“I love the rain.” He declares.

I roll my eyes looking back to my homework. “So does everyone. Next you're gonna say you’ve always had an adoration for sunsets. I’ve seen that movie 37 times.”

“No I mean it.” His eyes get wide now and his hands land square on both my shoulders. “I’ll buy a house one day. I’ll have a skylight window in my bedroom directly over my bed so I can watch the rain coat the glass at night. Actually scratch that, I want a hole. A hole in the ceiling so when it rains the water will just-” And then he uses his outstretched arm to palm himself in the face.

I giggle but he isn’t joking. I realize this is a side of him I haven’t seen and so I put my pencil down and search his expression. He wants me to take this seriously. Separate from his usual rambling and playful conversation while we work. So I fix my countenance and nod solemn.

Suddenly he looks nervous, unsure. He opens his mouth and then shakes his head softly closing it again.

“What?” I say breaking his silence.

“I try not to presume what heaven will be like. But I don’t think it’s wrong for me to think about things that God loves being there, that makes sense doesn’t it?”

“I guess so.” I say this slowly wondering where he’s about to take this.

"When I pray." He begins. "Sometimes I've asked if it be his will that I could have a rain room."

The corners of my mouth want to curl up at the childish honesty of his words but I stay straight and serious so he'll keep talking.

"What's that mean?" I prod.

"I want a room, an empty room where it just rains. A pouring constant sweet rain that echoes for miles contained in one room." He's smiling now. His voice has risen a bit louder filling up the room with theatricality. "And well it's eternity isn't it? I could literally spend a thousand years in the rain room. People would ask like, hey where's josh? And you can just tell them that I've been standing in a torrential downpour for the last century, that I'll be back sometime soon. I couldn't get pneumonia because this rain wouldn't have the capacity to do anything but give glory to the father. No wrinkly fingers, no slipping, no runny nose. That's what I want, a rain room. A room that's raining forever and ever."

And as he wound down I just stared at him. It was one of those moments where I knew I'd remember the conversation forever. That one day as I went about my day this would come back to me and I'd get sent right back to Joshua's bedroom floor in the middle of November. I knew that night I would pray that Josh would get a beautiful rain room. One that fulfilled and exceeded his wildest dreams.

"You love the rain." I conceded sorry that I ever questioned something so sacred to him.

"Damn right." He said and went right back to fielding with a math problem as if he didn't just blow my mind. I wasn't sure why this little peek of him changed my perception so abruptly but hey, I wasn't complaining.

Looking back now that he's been gone 7 months and 4 days. I know he's got a rain room somewhere. I know it was beyond his wildest dreams. The tears still come when I recall the boyish smile sitting criss cross on his bedroom floor. The one who had no idea what would come to pass 3 weeks later. I still can't look at the photos. I can't not rush to my phone every time it dings the ringtone that used to be his frequent replies. And when people ask me about him, there's a whole life of stories I could tell them. A boy who loved with reckless abandon. Who stopped at nothing to make the shy kid in the room feel included. Who told bedtime stories like no one you'd ever met. But I always say the same thing with the same guarded grin, Joshua loved the rain.

I picked at a string that had strayed from the arm of my sweater as we sat in silence. Our tummies warm and fuzzy like ants on a television screen, watching our town from above as it laughed at the thought of us. The emptied bottle rested between our hips. Our mouths felt loose in the calm of the night but there was nothing left to say. My eyes drifted to his neck, splashed with moonlight between the shadows of the trees. I let my eyes linger there, tracing along his hairline and committing the patterns of the little hairs that grew outside it to memory.

“Uzelesss.” He slurred as he kicked a rock from the edge of the cliff, we listened to it’s screams as it tumbled further down.

It didn’t seem any time had passed but as I woke brushing bits of moss from my hair, I could see how the trees were coated slick in morning light and our town buzzed alive once again down below. The birds sang solemn melodies as if they understood and I listened intently for a moment, dazed. I didn’t turn my head to check, I knew he was gone. My breaths came shaky and I felt raw. I ignored the ache in my head because the one in my chest was unbearable.

“Useless.” I whispered hot tears pooling at the corners of my eyes. And I grabbed the wine bottle from beside me and hurled it over the ledge. Unlike the rock, it smashed once, sickening and final. And with that, I wiped at my face, picked myself up off the ground, and began the walk home.

It’s Super cal i frag i list ic expi ali docious

Even though the sound of it

Is something quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough

You’ll always sound precocious

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Because I was afraid to speak

When I was just a lad

Me father gave me nose a tweak

And told me I was bad

But then one day I learned a word

That saved me aching nose

The biggest word you ever heard

And this is how it goes

Oh, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Even though the sound of it

Is something quite atrocious

If you say it loud enough

You’ll always sound precocious

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I

Um-dittle-ittl-um-dittle-I…

I just madeja sing supercalifragiliticexpialidocious. lol that’s my favorite word because it’s loooooong and we can say it. lol is it a “word”? i don’t know but it’s a famous song. and i love singing it. lol sing away peeps. raise those vibes. singing this song makes you happy inside. that’s why it’s my favorite word to sing. I don’t even know if i can say it without singing it. but you can try.

lol have a fun day.

Athena

10/02/20