My worst fear.

We move closer to downtown, buy a loft on the second floor of a crumbling brick building, the kind with exposed wooden beams, original floors, white-washed brick walls and a deck that grows ivy like an arbor overhead. The first thing I do is hang strings of twinkling lights from those rafters. I get you a video camera for your birthday. You smile and say thank you, but you hold my hand later and that means more to me than any words could. You let me be close to you, and I can't explain the way it fills me up, the kind of warmth that comes, not necessarily from being wanted, but actually appreciated.
We waste time in each other's company, sometimes saying nothing, laying on the floor listening to music. Finding figures in the plaster of the ceiling. Swapping jokes and cleverness. I make breakfast in the morning, putting life into lines and shelves and pockets, and you make fun of me for listening to n.p.r. and formulating plans I'll never keep. You've always been far cooler than I, getting on by the skin of your teeth sometimes, always with a smile. I am indebted to you, for the easy way you've pushed my mind into rethinking everything. A mental renaissance, electric. It's times like this I know you're amazing. You do your own thing and you don't need me much at all. Sometimes I think you only ask for help to make me feel useful, and help me gain some perspective. I force you to paint the kitchen yellow, and you paint everything else blue. I set up a corner for painting with an easel and a vintage drafting table, and sometimes I come home and you've drawn something, doodled your way into my creative realm. If you don't show me, I don't let myself look.
A lot of the time I feel like there is something you want to say, something you'd like to tell me or ways you'd like to touch me, affection, and you don't. But I know. I just know, and that's all there is. I force myself to touch you, to show you that I love you, I want so desperately to beat the odds...I'm cold and you're timid. I'll spend my lifetime showing you it's ok to love me back.
Some nights you don't come home. I make excuses for it but it tears me up. I pretend to believe every word you say, and once upon a time maybe I would've, but you're the one who taught me: question everything. This disgusting thing happens sometimes, where I hear my voice saying your words, and that's how I know you've gotten up inside of me. You break my heart but you'll never leave me, and I love too hard to let you go.
I know what you say about me. You can't go, you don't have a choice, I'm too nice. You don't want to be another man who fails me. This is just your life now, and that's that. You lay on the tracks, tied down by your own loyalty, and wait for the train to run you over.

But I'll never fucking let it.

I worry I'll grow sallow and old next to you, consumed by my own bitterness in anger that rots me to the core. I don't want to be a person who's children grow to hate her, but that's all we know because that's all we've been shown. I worry I'll grow cynical in your shadow, that as the years pass I open my mouth to make a suggestion but you shout a twisted retort that makes me think twice about ever opening my mouth again. I worry you'll hate me for loving you, for trapping you with things in a time when you were lost, I worry you think it's lucky you'll die before me, because there's nothing left to lose by my side. I worry that someday I'll wonder where the time has gone, that I'll live in the light of better days and try my best to be invisible, so you'll have no excuse but to continue pretending I'm not there, pretending not to see me.

Deja Vu

And suddenly, our little world is divided up: those of us that went back, and those of us that never quite could.

I just realized this next year is going to be really interesting. Pretty soon everyone is going to have to shed their greek life shells and become real people...I wonder where they will go. Funny how time flies, how the years treat us differently. If I think too hard on it, my chest begins to ache. My soul still mourns something I've lost. Still dwells, if only for a moment.
I see a pattern in myself, a desperate need to keep moving. The commitments of life are sometimes more than I can bear, all of our souls...bound by material things. I see that I do want a companion in all of this. But I also see how happy I can make myself when I am alone, and sometimes that seems like enough.

I guess I've realized that we'll always keep loving each other if we never speak of it. It can always be everything I had ever wanted, I can still have hope without ruining your potential. Isn't that frightening? Holding in my hand such a sweet fruit and never daring to taste...but is it so wrong to take this time to wonder how it came to fall right here into my hand? But really if I had my way, I'd smother you with love. So you'd never have to question it.

Toast.

I still have

this dumb feeling

you're something special

but that stung.

Voice Over.

Lately all this is starting to fade...like dusty haze and heat waves on a hot road in summer. I start thinking about life and love and living, and one thing seems to pick itself outta the mass...I think back to when you said I've figured it out, I've figured it all out and I didn't even know it. You didn't know how much that terrified me did you? You don't know how much everything does.

People always look at me and want to tell me what they think, and I guess I've decided its gotta be some kind of curse...people look me up and down and tell me how I look. People look at me all the time. Like somehow I invited all this shit. Like somehow I asked for their opinion. You're so young. You're so pretty, I love you.

I live alone. Sometimes I don't want to be seen.

Lately none of this seems to matter so much...I realize if I have time I'm gonna take it. It seems like so much right now. I know that won't last. People say your twenties are for being stupid...I smile a little when they say that. I wonder why people think I wanna spend my time being stupid. The way I see it the stakes are higher now but things ain't much different than being a kid was...it's all fun and games till someone gets pregnant or dies...Go live your life, be stupid! I'm too smart to be stupid. Always have been, that's why it's been so difficult. I always knew I saw things different. The stupidest things I ever did were listening to other people...doin what they said I wanted. What they wanted.

Figured it out huh? I just can't get your voice outta my head. If I have time, I know a few experiences I'd like to have. That's it isn't it? I'm holding the reins but the horse has a mind of its own. And I know it can feel me on its back. I think at some point we all chose this...like rides in an amusement park...like, hey, lets try Life...you don't know where you'll start or where you'll end up but it's just a cosmic blip, and you can't take anything with you but you get it all when you come back...in the end you laugh and say well that was something...if I get time, there are a few experiences I'd like to have. I think about buying some land in the country...raising a few animals. I'd like to have kids. If I'm lucky I'll fall in love, but Daddy I don't think I'll ever love again the way we talked about...I know too much now. Not in a bad way. People say I'm young, and that's good. When you look at things the way I do everything seems a bit like a business arrangement. I'll hold on to the control I have, and surrender to what I don't...

You ever think, if it all was taken away from you...if you were born into a different body, same soul, knowin nothing...could you ever find yourself again? Could you leave clues for yourself to find, clues that transgress the boundaries of your own body? What truly speaks to your soul...is there anything you could do now to call yourself home again someday?

To act in love

Misty, grey morning. I pull myself from a dream as unpleasant as the reality to which I wake. I set out, not ten steps, before I deem this day unworthy, the sinking feeling in my chest a match step for step for skies on the brink of collapse...tumult, mouth open wide, seconds before the wail. I inhale, trying to find relief in this humid blanket. Runners running. Boys and girls walk in time with each other, fingers laced, absorbing each other and buzzing, melding together into single units. I look, silent and detached, accepting what I cannot control, succumbing to routine. I only wish to act in love. 
Pup's always so excited for the day, I could learn a little from his exuberance. He expects only the best from me, and forgives the worst. He never fails to hold the bar high even when I fail to measure up. Its that kind of love I want you to know, that kind of engulfing patience and sweetness that I cannot abandon, I wish to show to you. Each day, you fail to measure up, but I wake up every morning expecting things to be different, anticipating only the best, forgiving yesterday.
Familiar pressure, a tightness in my chest. I know how this goes. Why I hang on? Belief, faith, because I know no other way. I will always hope for you, I will always shelter you. No matter which direction you take, no matter where you plan to go, I will only show you love and hold you fondly in the recesses of my mind. I will always be grateful that you opened up the world a little wider for me, so that I could share your space and come to know what you know. Palm outstretched, if you want to fly, then fly. I won't keep you from where you need to go. It's not in my nature.

Prayer.

I am happy here. So happy that I can make fun of the reasons my life isn't perfect because they don't matter. I am happy. Please, let me stay so lucky.

Chapter One

The sliding doors open instantly, she passes through them and the cold, sterile air hits her in the face. She barely notices, making a beeline for the front desk. An exhausted looking nurse spares her a polite smile. “Visiting?” the woman asks, “What's the name?”

She says it, and it feels strange upon her lips, to speak out loud a name that for so long has only existed within her mind. The nurse glances at the computer, and with a slow, deliberate hand types the name into the blinking search bar. “Room 427,” the she replies, “take the elevator on your left, its the fourth floor...” but trails off. The girl has already gone, the sweeping end of her long skirt slipping through the closing elevator just in time.

The cheerful ping at each passing floor undermines the fluttering wings of urgency she feels within her stomach. One...In this long moment it seems that this could be any elevator, in any place, with doors that open to a different day, to what now felt like a different life. Two...she is...Three...uncomfortably aware of her heart, trying its best to beat itself out of her body. Four.

The metal cage releases her onto an otherwise empty floor, save for a push-cart that bears a barrage of old flower baskets, their blooms wilted and hanging in defeat over hastily scrawled get-well notes. You are in our prayers and You are thought of warmly in our hearts. She pauses to finger one of the notes. What does that even mean, she wonders. As if the senders were already severing emotional ties at the time of post, as if the recipient were already dead. A preemptive, even if in hindsight, not entirely unsuitable gesture.

She sets off in the direction of his room, the clacking of her strappy Prada heels rebounding off linoleum tile.

Outside a recursion of identical doors, a metal plaque reads “427.” She reaches for its handle, but stops short to stare through the tiny glass pane in its center into the vacuous hospital bedroom . He lays in a bed, his face turned away, searching for something he'll never quite find out the large window on the opposite wall. She takes a deep breath of resolution, and twists the handle.

Upon hearing the door, his head turns and his familiar brown eyes come to rest upon her figure within the frame.

The corners of his mouth stretch into a smile and in a raspy, British lilt, he whispers: “Maggie.”