On their last evening together that summer, they drank until the sun dropped, until the golden outline of their shadows faded.
Their bodies melted into the late evening.
Goosebumps rose from his sun prickled skin.
She said: “I’m going in now.”
He remained silent as, finally, the sun sunk from view.
David was dressed simply. A plain white t-shirt and blue hoody. He stood in plain sight, against the pillar by the snacks and plastic cups.
His brother was talking to a young woman in the corner, his head craned and mouth making soft utterances.
As David watched, his brother turned to him, smiled and winked.
He walked by her door for the third time that day. Not by design, for he had to.
She was leaving as he was passing.
“Hello.”
“Hi,” he muttered.
“It’s been a while,” she said.
“I suppose.”
“How are you?”
“Fine.”
She smiled, that same smile.
He nodded and walked on.
Looking up at the sky I see two sets of contrails and two planes, one with contrails, one without. How many planes have passed overhead?
I’m sitting back as the sun sets, a breeze picking up and catching me. The pale sky is empty, the roads silent for now. Looking up I see a white line, finite and fully formed. I start to think I must be in a bubble. As I watch, I notice its slow transit of the sky above me, a sky borne javelin, widening and dropping – propelling forward. Will it fall upon me?
I think of a million different words, myriad ideas about this transient object. I let the ideas dissipate and become, themselves, transient.
I have a question, a hypothetical situation.
You are walking through a field, miles from another person, or human contact. You come across a wild bird, a very rare wild bird; the last of its kind. Out here, it has no reason to fear a person. It is friendly and approaches you, resting upon your hand. Do you capture this bird, the last of its kind? Do you show the world what it looked like before it was lost? Or do you let it wander free, back into the wild and never to be seen again, to die free alone and oblivious?
Would you be able to live the rest of your life knowing the memory of that rare bird will die with you?
And there was this hot feeling on the back of my neck. A sunburn, prickly heat.
It was night though, wasn’t it? I was at the head of the bed, the dim side lamp to see by. Your face was cast in shadow.
Yet, I knew you were looking into me. Waiting.
The first true sun of spring, the trees still naked, still dead; still.
“God, feels strange, ” he says, peering over the edge.
“How so?” his colleague asks from the railing, ready to blow steam from his coffee.
“It being light so early.” He forms a raindrop on his lip, following it to the street below.
He sits in the corner alone. A voice in his head asks the question ‘ will I die alone?’
He replies, ‘yes.’
Later on he thinks that, perhaps, he is fine with this idea.
Another voice asks, ‘but aren’t I too young to think like that?’
Again, he answers, ‘yes.’
Tagged fiction, loneliness, people, short story, thoughts
“Did you leave cold coffee by my bed?” he asked, stumbling into the light from the dark of his room.
“I left hot coffee,” she replied, not looking from her book.
“Oh.” He wiped away the last nugget of sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You were so quiet, I didn’t have the heart.”
The phone rang, she answered.
“Come outside.”
“I haven’t woken up yet,” she said.
“You’re still asleep?”
She rolled onto her back, breathing heavily.
“Well not anymore, you woke me up.”
“Okay, well come outside.” There was a pause in his words. “I have something to show you.”
I’m wondering about distances. You know, how we measure them. Things like that.
On my first holiday alone, the distances felt great. Now they are small, much like hopping from one lily pad to the next.
And you keep moving forward until one day they merge – on which one did you start?
