while i was away

we were supposed to engage in a mock-battle. a battle with jello and liquids. we would hurl the cups full of our ammo across the gym floor to the other side, filled with students in marching band. i hit three students square in the head, but i felt that it was part of my duty. i didn't know why we had to do it. i didn't understand what the fighting was for. all i knew, in my starlit state, was that it was required of me, to stand up for my side of the battle.

after the battle ceased, the three girls pursued me. i ran through jungles and swam across rivers and knew that i would be safe only in my rectangular room, with her. i surely would stumble upon it at some point in the midst of green leaves and monkey tails. they were hot on my tail, and finally tracked me down, armed with cups of kool-aid and soda. i begged them, pleaded with them, to put it down, that i only doused them minutes earlier because of a sense of duty. they were nice enough, but explained that retribution was the only school of revenge that they were versed in. so they did it. they splashed it all over me, and it was wet. not only was it wet, it hurt. it sent pains radiating throughout my mid-section, and when i tried to tell them, they were disinterested and had started to retreat. there i sat, in grass as tall as the wild boars roaming the fields, unable to move, unable to call for help. i had some of my senses with me, telling me that i could not possibly be so harmed as i felt. afterall. kool-aid? jello? soda? carbonation only stings for a second, right. i began to crawl to wherever my body could take me, to find my room. i knew that i would be safe in her company, in my mishaped room.

i found it. i found it with relative ease. in fact, i do not remember even climbing the 31 steps to my safety, but there she was, waiting for me, but without a smile. i must have been gone to battle months or more, for i'd never seen her hair so long before. maybe somebody has talked her out of cutting it short like she's always wanted, i thought. the joy overcame me so violently that it pushed any pain that i'd carried back from the warzone into history. she never smiled, though. she just said hello, and how was your trip without enough intonation to warrant the punctuation that should follow. my chest cavity urged me to cry. it's easy to do, i noticed, when the body is weakened, to allow all emotional strength to vanish. i thought that maybe i was crazy. maybe one of her moods had persisted in my absence, the mood where she feels her teeth clamped shut and her lips immobile, her eyes unaccepting of new stimuli.

i decided to wait it out, maybe tell a few bland narrations of what i had seen and heard, hoping to get a one word answer back from her, to momentarily calm my fear that the never would may be well on its way to is.

she said that she had to go to lunch with a friend. at the word friend, the sparkle that once caught my breath and threw it out the window appeared, but stole no breath of mine. i still could barely surmount the locks of hair that reached almost to her elbows. moreover, i wasn't sure if it was even her. maybe the battlezone had done more to my perception than my rationality had room for, maybe nothing in her had changed at all.

as she left the room, i flipped on the wall screen. it showed her every move. it showed her at a well lighted cafe, art on the walls made of yarn, a single pink carnation in an old, tarnished vase on the wooden table. across from her, a woman of age 40 or so. maybe an old teacher? maybe a friend of the family? my spirit should have lifted, i kept telling myself. why did not the relief of a story's conclusion fill my body as it surely should have? i wanted to turn the wall screen off. but i didn't. instead. i watched for hours. i watched that sparkle gleam incessantly for something that i could not quite get a hold of. i watched the long hair become part of her, i watched her smiles. her smiles were not nearly as wide and as unplanned as they used to be. how disillusioned my absense must have made her.

i laid down on the floor, i remembered the first time we had met. i remembered the first time we had seen pure beauty pour from the eyes of the other. and my body began to ache again. and i knew that it would never cease. it would never be cured because she was the only way. she was the only one to help me. so i closed my eyes tightly, partly from the pain of my stomach, mainly from the hopeless despairity i saw in my coming days, and i began to cry.

i woke up crying in this way.