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been living and loving in half-measures for years. Living my life in pencil, because I don’t think I can get shit right the first time. Maybe because I think it’ll save me some pain. So far, I’ve been wrong.
“Save me a seat?” I ask quietly. It’s an inside joke, one of those very old, tiny traditions made into something bigger over the years,
“All I know is that if I found out heaven was real and got there first? I’d hang back in the waiting room and save you a seat.”
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It’s as if time sped up on us somewhere, and it’s all happening too quickly. Time does that, I suppose. When you spend so much of it looking forward to the next thing, it can easily slip out from under you.
I think about my answer and watch another jellyfish drift away. Oddly elegant things with no hearts, brains, or blood, that go on existing and serving a purpose, anyway. “I think that as I get older, I’m okay knowing that some stuff will always be beyond my understanding,” I say. “I think it’s arrogant to think the stars and moon can affect the tides but not have an effect on me. Some things are just more powerful than we are.”
“People are the sum of their experiences, and we all have free will, but even if it is all made up, I think it’s nice to understand a little bit of why we all handle shit differently.”
“I think it’s another one of those things that makes me understand why I’m feeling something, instead of like the feeling itself is controlling me.”
“Dinner,” I repeat, swallowing forcibly. “And taking it slow,” I say. God, whose shitty idea was that?!
How do you tell the man who’s always wanted to take care of you that you resent how much you need him?
“I promise I’ll fight with you more,” I say. I’ll fight for you more, too.
But then I realize he’s just right. We’re what we are and what we’ve always been to each other. The alchemy of our bodies and the way my skin still remembers his is a part of that. He said it himself before: he’s altered my very DNA.
Because you make up half of my soul. Because as desperate as I am to be near you, to be inside you, I’m terrified that having you this close again will also remind you of all the parts of me you wanted to leave.
One day, when we’re very old and gray, one of us will open our eyes to a day that the other won’t, but we’ll smile knowing how full life has been, knowing how we spent forever. Everything left of it, together.
