You (You #1)(110)

I push my hands into your tiny chest. You are breathing, I think. You must be breathing. There cannot be nothing inside of someone as lovely and lit as you; we had an everythingship. You are too robust and full of life and bathrobe rules and orgasms and pies and bitter caramel apples to be gone. I hate myself and I love you and I kiss you and you don’t kiss me back and I beg you to come back and I hold your little hands and I look into your little eyes and at the end of the play Closer upon which the movie is based, the Natalie Portman character gets hit by a car. She dies. In the movie you don’t see Natalie Portman die and I like it better that way and you cannot be dead, Beck. You’re not even twenty-five and you don’t do drugs and you are safe and sweet and studious and I lean over you so that my ear touches your lips. When you breathe I want to hear it and taste it and I wait. I wait for sixteen centuries and eight light-years and I pull away.

You are gone.

I stand up and grab my hair and I want to pull it out because you can’t run your fingers through it anymore and maybe I am wrong and I get back down on the ground and mash my head into your hand and wait for you to touch me. Please, Beck, please. But your fingers don’t move and when I lift my head up the silence feels official. It’s hateful and personal unlike the peaceful silence of the basement. You don’t rise up to forgive me and ward off the evil silence that weighs me down more every second that you are mute.

I look at you. You don’t look at me. Your body is just parts now. You can’t help me because you left me because you wanted to be gone, forever. Your crimes are many and you stole my Love Story and I pick up your Da Vinci Code. I am stunned because some of the pages have never been turned; I know my way around a book. I think you skipped entire passages, you brainless phony. When you asked me where I was in the book, you were cheating. The most romantic time of my life was a hoax and I am so preoccupied with exploring your Da Vinci Code that I don’t see you come back to life.

But you do.

You tricked me, you cunt. You latch on to my ankle and pull and I fall over and I drop your Da Vinci Code and land on my side and it hurts goddamn it and you kick me in the dick and that hurts goddamn it. You are not gone, forever and you are possessed and out of words and my groin aches and my side pounds and you are not my savior, you make things worse. You are alive, underhanded, kicking me when I’m down and I scream in agony and you are toxic and Satanic because just a minute ago:

“You were dead, you fucking bitch.”

You say nothing. You kick. But I’m nontoxic and I’m bigger and braver and God gives me the strength to recover from your nasty blows. I swat your legs and now you collapse, flat on your back. I mount you. You try to bite me but you can’t and you try to kick me but you can’t and you try to claw me but your wrists are locked in my hands. You can’t do anything with me pinning you down. You spit at my face; you are a Masshole. And you are weaker now and I let go of your arms and wrap my hands around your neck for real this time. You try to hit me but your little fists aren’t what they once were. The bad in you outweighs the good and your cheeks turn white and my cock throbs in pain and my hipbone pulsates and your eyes bulge. You’re disgusting. My mother’s Nirvana T-shirt that I was wearing the day you stalked me to my house, the one I’ve held on to my whole life, it’s a mess of cum and vanilla. You have torn it beyond repair, you bitch.

“You were right, Beck,” I say to you. “You kill people. You do.”

I squeeze your neck and I thank you for kicking me in the dick, and I try to blink your saliva out of my eyelashes. I thank you for proving beyond a reasonable doubt that you are bad. You do not want love or life and we never had a chance and you are commonplace and raw, gasping and gurgling. Solipsistic with your fudgy inconsiderate fingerprints ruining my books, my heart, my life.

“What’s that, Beck?”

You have one word left in you: “Help.”

And I do help you. I take my right hand and reach for your Da Vinci Code. I shove the book into my mouth and bite a few pages. I yank the book away and I toss it and grab the torn pages out of my mouth, wet with my saliva that you wanted so badly.

My last words to you: “Open up, Guinevere.”

I shove the pages into your mouth and your pupils slip around and your back arches. This is the sound of you dying. There are bones cracking—where, I do not know—and tear ducts in emergency mode—the tear of death seeps out of your left eye and onto your porcelain cheek and your eyes are fixated on somewhere I have never traveled, gladly beyond any experience; your eyes have their silence. You are no better than a doll now and you do not react as the pages in your mouth take the blood that rises from your gullet.

And all at once I miss you and you missed me and I call to you and I seize your tiny shoulders.

You don’t respond. You are as flawed as all the books in the store; you have ended and left me and you are gone, forever. You will never leave me in the dark ever again and I will never wait for a response from you ever again. Your light is out for good now and I take you in my arms.

No.

I want to throw myself in front of engine engine number nine. How could I have done this? I never made you pancakes. What the fuck is wrong with me? I can’t breathe and you are my sweet lord, Beck, different, hot. You are. Were.

I cry.





52


AT the end of your days, you claimed that you weren’t a writer. But I think you would appreciate the poetic symmetry regarding your burial. It was a long, lonely drive upstate, more than four hours outside of the city. It was tough going in the Buick, with you in the trunk with your green pillow, silent as Little Compton in the winter. I drove past Nicky’s Pizza and I kept going and I found this diner. Nicky’s and his brother’s extra homes are nestled in nearby Forrest Lake, a private area just outside of Chestertown. This is a pure township, Beck, old-fashioned and pleasantly anchored to an antiquated way of life. I eat a grilled cheese sandwich because I have to, because burying you in the cold forest will be demanding, even though everyone who comes into the diner can’t resist remarking on the mild winter. So mild, I wouldn’t need a red Holden Caulfield hunting cap from Macy’s even if I still had one. I will not cry. Not here.