Dark Whispers
The only light in the room came from the alarm clock.
Projected on the ceiling, the red laser advertised that it was 3:02 am and 67 degrees.
Outside her neat little house, but unheard in that bedroom, nightsounds stopped in the ninety degree humidity. In the distance, a far walk from the little subdivision, cars could be heard singing against the concrete of the interstate. Aside from the highway and hums from airconditioners, there was unusual silence and still.
She had grown used to sleeping alone. She still didn't sleep the whole night through, but she'd given up reaching over and patting his side of the bed, searching.
It had taken a year for her to clean out the drawer he kept in her dresser.
Her closest friends and family had encouraged her to date. To move on.
But she couldn't.
She wouldn't.
Once, she went out on a blind date that her sister had set. There were drinks, there was dinner, but there was no dessert. The night ended with an awkward hug and no followup phone call.
When she came home, she found an indention on her neatly made bed.
On his side. Like he'd been lying there.
She tried not to dwell on it, but sleep was difficult to find that night.
It had taken two years for her to begin hearing his voice. Almost indistinct at first, and always from the next room, she never could be sure if she were losing her mind. Once or twice, she heard her name clearly. Her heart would clench, and her eyes would well with tears, but she always answered. "Yes? I'm here!" she'd say, and then feel like a fool for speaking to an empty house.
After three years, the house answered her.
_______
The only light in the room came from the alarm clock.
It was a rare night that she slept solidly and soundly, and a rarer night still when the bed would move with the mass of another.
This was such a night.
First, the bedclothes were slowly pulled down.
61 degrees.
Two minutes passed.
The bedframe creaked beneath weight unseen.
57 degrees.
Sleeping on her side, she'd drawn her legs up and in, fetal. Invisible hands traced from her calf to her thigh, pushing her thin nightgown up to her waist.
52 degrees.
She stirred, but didn't wake. Her hair moved as though underwater; it waved in the darkness, stroked by hands as black as the void and as clear as the air.
48 degrees.
Her cheek was caressed, and a butterfly kiss flitted across her lips.
42 degrees.
"Wake up."
His voice was shattered ice in the chill; broken glass in the night's still, dancing on nerve's edge and heart's race.
40 degrees.
She awakened with a start and her breath plumed, but she couldn't see it. All was darkness, and then she felt him.
His familiar hands, his scent, his breath surrounded her.
She smiled, and he wiped away her joyful tears.
As they kissed, she felt his weight move atop her, and she parted her legs for him, wrapping them around and behind his form.
A sharp exhale from them both as he entered her, gently, the way he used to do, those years before.
She knew it must be a dream.
Everything was a dream, since that day he fell/flew. It has all been one nightmare, and this, this cold darkness must be real, because he was here and he was now and there were never fingers pointed and widow's stares and labels thrown and bridges leaped or burned or jumped. In this embrace, in the cold summertime darkness, she felt his love and she was filled with hope; finally, he had chosen and terms like mistress, homewrecker, whore and other woman weren't uttered and wept.
She laughed as she came, and his groans took a more urgent tone.
As he filled her, his hands found her throat, and she smiled with the familiarity of his touch.
He collapsed onto her in that way, spent, and her arms wrapped around his strong back.
His hands never left her neck.
A whisper.
"You."
A harder clench.
The darkness of the room was filled with red splotches of color behind her eyes.
"Shouldn't."
Her smile fell away as tunnel vision began to turn those splotches into pinpricks of crimson.
"Have."
Consciousness was nearly gone as she began to struggle, weakly and too late.
"Told her."
The world went as dark as the room.
"About us."
37 degrees, and only light and signs of life came from the alarm clock.
Nightsounds resumed in the neat little yard, and tires could still be heard singing on I-95. The tune resembled a dirge as the spectre of her former lover faded, returning to the water below the Talmadge bridge, where he spent the last few seconds of his life those years before.
We were meant to be together
She was mine.
I knew it from day one. It was October the first time I saw her at the other end of the subway car, head bent over the book she was reading. I didn’t know any girls who read as much as I did, or at all really, so I assumed she must be older than me. The day she looked at me without turning away, I knew she was. Girls my age were never so bold. I was a junior in high school at the time. I figured she was in college. I needed to know her. For weeks, I looked forward to my commute home from school, hoping she would be there. The day I finally got the nerve to approach her, she was with another woman. Too nervous to interrupt their conversation to introduce myself, they exited the train together while I was left kicking myself.
Despite my efforts to always catch the same train, it was months before I saw her again.
By Christmas break, I had given up hope although I had not forgotten her. How could I? She was the piece I was missing.
Then one spring day, there she was. When she got on the train, she looked around. When she saw me, her eyes lit up and she walked over to me.
“Finally,” she said.
“Finally?” I repeated.
“I’ve been looking for you for months.”
“You’ve been looking for me?” I had become a parrot.
She laughed a husky laugh that warmed me. “Yes. For months.” She paused. “My name is Alyssa.”
“Alyssa.”
She laughed again. “Yes. And your name is…”
“My name…”
“Your name…”
“I have a name.”
“I would be surprised if you didn’t,” she said, still smiling.
“You’re more beautiful than I remembered.”
“That is not your name. But thank you, Curly.”
“Curly?”
“Your hair. I have to call you something.”
“Oh. Ha. Thomas. Tommy. My name.”
She extended her hand. “Nice to meet you Thomas, Tommy.”
Her hand was so small in mine. I held it as if it were glass, afraid I might break her.
“So, where have you been, Curly?”
“Looking for you, too.”
“I guess the stars finally aligned.”
“I guess.”
“Where do you go to school?”
“Regis.”
“Cool. Good school. What year are you?”
I thought about lying. I didn’t want my age to turn her off but figured that’s not how I wanted to start my relationship with my future wife.
“I’m a Junior, rising senior. Just took the SATs. Looking at colleges now.”
“Nice. Where are you looking?”
“Mostly local. I need to work and study at the same time. Hopefully I’ll get some scholarships and federal student loans.”
“Do your parents not want you to go out of state?”
“They could care less. I don’t even know where they are. I live in a group home.”
She looked concerned. “Oh. Wow. I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m used to it. They lost custody of me when I was four. Alcoholics. I have six older brothers and sisters. The one closest to me in age, Billy, was with me until I was 14. He and the others are all on their own now. I see them sometimes. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where do you go to school?”
“Dominican Academy.”
“High School?” Yeah, I was surprised.
“Yes. Finishing up my freshman year.”
I suspect my eyes bulged.
“What?”
“You’re a freshman?”
“Yes.”
“How old are you?”
“Fourteen. I’ll be fifteen next month.”
I was seventeen. I’d be eighteen in six months. “Jailbait” flickered in my brain, but I didn’t care. She was mine.
We dated for the next three years. I attended all her plays and recitals. She came to my graduation. I filled her closet with new clothes. She balked at first, but accepted I had her best interest at heart when it came to how she dressed. Especially since I couldn’t always be there to protect her. My senior year, I would take the train with her to school and pick her up. Once I was working and going to college full time, I got a used car and would pick her up whenever I could. She came with me to family get togethers. I went to her prom having not slept in 48 hours because of work and school. (I fell asleep at the after-party, but I was there.)
When it came time for her to apply to colleges, she only looked out of state. She was smart: Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins were her top choices. I had hoped she’d come to my college, but her parents wouldn’t hear of it, and I didn’t want to push too hard. So, instead, while she was applying to colleges, I was hoping she’d get pregnant. I can admit now that I was afraid if she left, she wouldn’t come back and that was not an option.
She broke up with me during winter break, her freshman year at Harvard.
I called her. I called her mom. I called her again. I asked to see her. We went for a drive to Turtle Cove. We were quiet for a while, as we walked by the water.
“This is a mistake,” I said. “We were meant to be together.”
“It’s not a mistake, Tommy. We’ve been over for a long time. I just didn’t know how to break up with you until we had distance between us.”
I stopped walking and turned to her. “Don’t do this. Please. We were meant to be. I’ve already found us the perfect house. In Long Island. Like I always dreamed. We’ll get married in your mom’s church. We’ll have six kids and they’ll all be smart like you. I’ll take care of you. All of you. Please, baby. I’ve known since I first saw you that you were the one.”
“I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m not the one. I’m seeing someone else.”
Everything went black. She was mine. I had imagined our future, and it was beautiful. Perfect. I grabbed her shoulders and started to shake her.
“Is ‘seeing’ a euphemism for fucking? Are you fucking someone else? One of your classmates at Harvard? I’m not good enough for you anymore? Is that it?”
“You’re hurting me, Tommy!”
“I’m hurting you? I’m hurting YOU??” at which point I threw her on the ground and threw myself on top of her. “You belong to me,” I said, one hand around her neck, banging her head into the ground as the other pulled at her clothes.’’
“Don’t do this, Tommy,” she said, struggling to push me off.
“I did everything for you! I would do anything for you.”
“Then let me go,” she said, her voice a whisper.
“Never.”
It’s possible she took her last breath as I pounded into her body for the last time. When I rolled off her and pulled her close, her head fell at an odd angle.
I stroked her hair as I held her.
She was mine.
Zero Sum Game
We went our separate ways
Once we overstayed the painful days
Together tangentially, bipolar opposites
Entombed, penitentially, unipolar proximates
Who was plus, added to who was minus:
Camus added to Thomas Aquinas
Courtshipping guilt-tripping when doing the math
Step out dripping from the draining bloodbath
We were right to distance from who we've been
Wobbled uncertainties 'gainst crumbling linchpin
We, equally opposite — neither victim nor hero
All summed up, we simply add up to zero
The remainder
You are here, with me.
Within the fall of the gentlest rain, the caress of sunlight on my bare skin and somewhere in the winking of stars.
Your face is carved into the bare ceiling that I gaze at for hours.
Your laughter floods my ears until I hear nothing but you, there is nothing without you.
The warmth of a blanket yet the first kiss of winter wind, you are everywhere.
A trickle of water, a lit candle; fresh glaring streaks of vibrant paint on white walls and thousands of written florid words, never sent.
You’re present when the clock strikes midnight or a book is read aloud.
The overwhelming scent of your hair follows me, leaping between my scattered dreams. There is no escaping the memory of you. So sweet, so bitter.
You never left, and you never will.
