train wreck

02 April 2003 - 09:30

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>

One night he dragged me into someone's back yard in the rain and stared into my eyes for eternity. He said a lot of things that night, about what he had been looking for his whole life. That's what used to stick out in my memory.

What sticks out now--
His face almost touching mine: "I'm obsessed with a certain moment. You're walking down the street; everything is fluid, flowing, you're animated. A car slams into you, and you are stiff, lifeless, rigid. The moment when things stop, or change, and nothing will ever be the same again, no, the beginning of that moment, when you don't know what hit you yet, but something did. I feel like I am that moment."

I was sick that night, and a wave of nausea sent me crouching in the wet grass. He leaned down next to me, pressed his cheek to mine. Underneath a flower that looked like a star, a flower that only he and I would ever notice.

*
Yesterday at work I was putting fliers on trays when the guys at the drive-thru called my name. I turned, and he was leaning out of his car into the window. My face went white and my heart stopped. I mean it, I felt it thud really hard and then stop--the moment when things stop, or change, and you don't know what hit you yet--and I hit my chest with the heel of my hand, lurched forward, eyes brimming. I took the three-page letter from him without knowing what it was. And without touching him.

"I'll see you later."
I don't know why I chose those words.I turned and walked away.

Like paramedics, my coworkers descended on me, an arm across my shoulders, warm eyes holding mine, "Are you ok? Do you need a break? Who was that?"

<<--unravel * reintegrate-->>