We Are Dying

Pressed against me, she holds on with both hands. It’s not like her to hold on that way, not like her to be so openly needed. When I had first walked up she was so cool, so casually detached. I wondered over it for only one moment and then...
Music and bad country singing, “Do you need another drink, baby?” It is as if our life is not SO very different, it is as if I have not lost her. I laugh and I notice her notice and smile at me, I sing along dramatically and I see her in the corner of my eyes. She watches as my mouth follows the words, she mouths them also and when I meet her eyes, once again, she smiles.
Hello, smile. There you are, oh my dear, dear God how I have missed you.
We leave feeling buzzed and in the end wind up sitting in a garage, listening to the radio and talking. It’s not our garage, not our little blue, shitty radio, not our lives anymore. But we are there, together for the first time in, for the first time in three months and twenty-three days. We are together where we were always suppost to stay, together. And when I ask what time it is and she coughs back a breath before answering, “5:15.” it breaks my heart to tell her good bye. I can’t.
I can’t just walk away from her, I love her. She is part of myself and I miss her SO much it burns me and I hurt with it.
Then I get up and start to walk away and she says, “Hey?”
“Yeah?” I turn back to her, hoping that my hurt is not so very clear. It always is to her, I am part of her.
I wasn’t prepared for her eyes to hold tears, I wasn’t ready for her bottom lip to tremble so slightly. It’s killing her just as it is killing me. “I - I,” a deep breath, “I miss you, I am going to call more and I will come home soon as I can and I will talk to you soon, I miss you!” A rush of words and then she is pressed against me, she holds me with both hands...