breccia

she said she'd give him everything,
but all that he wanted was
to stop running for a minute
to rest in the shade.

do you remember our version of the alamo? we were trapped inside, and we could have sworn that there were fires burning all around us, and muskets and cannons, and the entire mexican army had disguised itself as the wisconsin night. do you remember if i comforted you, if i tried to speak eloquently, or if i was as quiet and scared as you were? if i was, i apologize. i should have done more to help you survive. our hair darkened as we grew up, as we absorbed the soil through our bare feet, as we swam in the river with the tannins from the trees up north. i know that you remember the gardens, and all of the things that grew in them. watermelons. cucumbers. rows of raspberries and strawberries. rhubarb. carrots. the magic of pulling on the green stems, and eating them straight from the ground, dirt and all. we dug earthworms, nightcrawlers, on the mornings after thunderstorms and sold them at the end of the driveway, but you kept sneaking them back into the ground.

she was like sledding into a barbed-wire fence.
(that sounds terrible.)
she was like getting lock-jaw.
(that's a brave metaphor, my love.)
we didn't talk for years. did not talk. did not meet for breakfast. did not run into each other at fucking trivia nights, did not attend the same gallery openings-
(but you slept together?)
sometimes. when one of us was awake, the other was usually asleep.
(did you like anything about her?)
yes.
(what did you like about her?)
her shoulder blades.
(that's a good one. that's a trump card. shoulder blades do not tell lies.)
and they would either give in to me, or pull away from me, or sigh with indifference.
(you paid attention to her shoulder blades. that's impressive. i don't think anyone has ever noticed my shoulder blades.)
that's not fair, and probably not true.
(not since high school, at least. i remember dancing with this boy, and i had begged my mom to make me a dress with a spaghetti straps and a scoop in the back. he was afraid to touch my skin, but he was also afraid to put his hands around my waist. so he tried to keep them entirely on the spaghetti straps. it didn't work. we couldn't dance. so i told him, "on my back. put. your. hands. on. my. back." he was terrified, and he decided to grip by shoulder blades like handles. his hands were sweating, and he stared at my forehead. but i have to give him credit, he did not let go.)

after she told her story, it settled like lazy organic sediment to the bottom of the evening. he imagined dancing with her in her spaghetti straps scoop back. she was imagining him, as well, with his hands on her waist, then shoulder blades, then waist. they didn't talk much, but adjusted and re-adjusted the incredible sentences inside of their heads, wanting to say things like:

if we had met in high school, i would have slept in your single bed. your parents would have gotten sick of me hanging around. they would have worried about us having sex, but they didn't need to, because we were very patient teenagers. we were going to wait until we could drive across the border into some sleepy canadian town where we could rent a cabin and cover ourselves in quilts, light a fire, and forget everything about being kids, everything about being americans, and focus on un-learning all of the history we had ever been taught.

we're all barbed-wire, sometimes.

i drank another cup of coffee. my stomach growled.
here is what is.