Chasing Graveyards

That day we went to the glass graveyard I remembered something important: that you and I could do this kind of thing, all exploration, and no words. We were always good at this. Always hiding in the dark, in the rickety backyard treehouse, in the shadows of big stars and abyss. But this time it was bright. The trees all painted artichoke and evergreen touching and the air heavy and pregnant with the waters nearby. The middle of the day with nowhere to hide my face from you. Instead, my blush and sweat of heat was visible, and I liked it that way. I wanted you to suddenly see me and remember us, remember our twinkling eyes dancing with the mermaid desert sea glass and all the space between us.

When I was a little kid there was this book Because Of Winn Dixie and I’ve always remembered this one scene where Miss Gloria shows Opal her glass tree. This giant willow in the afternoon sunlight with hundreds of bottles in sharp colors of moon blue and absinth green all swaying and clinking creating a strange music. It was called the mistake tree and was made to keep the ghosts away. Suddenly it seemed I was living out the mistake tree out with you. The cottonwoods moved lazily and the sun passing through the branches cast rainbows everywhere. This yard of haunted glass made me feel like I was playing ghosts with you, and we were incapable of staying away. I couldn’t avoid your gaze whenever I caught it through the branches we passed through, and I thought maybe this was how it was supposed to go. I could imagine for a brief second what it would be like to never have given up. To pass through this beautiful place close together instead of miles apart.

I pushed myself to not get too close or reveal too much. But when your arm brushed mine, I have to admit I burned. I remembered the heated summer nights we drove to the ends of the earth and the meteor showers we ran to. I remembered the great pleasures I took in wrapping your curls through my fingers. I could see the archers bow we’d form together. String pulled taught and bow quivering. Lips telling me what I’ve always known.

But that day in the glass graveyard it looked like an asteroid hit the sand producing thousands of glittering radioactive shards that we stepped on with ease. You fished me out a half bottle and when I threw it, it stayed whole. We laughed about it then, my inability to break even glass. But now I see it was maybe more. You took me to this fragile place, and we still were the most delicate pieces. Human vessels that could bleed, and I did. Those mosquitos tore me up and when I smashed one against my arm it burst with my blood, and I recollected that I was beating and pulsing with life in your presence as I always had.

But we were never good with words, were we? When we broke up for the second time out of a million my mother would confess, “He was too quiet for you.”

And I know the morning after that when you were brushing your teeth in my bathroom you whispered, “Your mom is right you know; I am too quiet for you.”

The silence that followed was deafening. I looked up in the mirror and saw myself freeze mid brush and I thought I was going to fall. It was like this deep and childlike fear was cracked open carelessly. My face crumpled up in the knowledge that you knew what she did, and I somehow missed the memo.

We never could say what we really meant to each other, and this still seemed to be the case. But I found a memorable ease in the stillness, the lack of language. It was enough to step on piles of glass with you. Chasing those old ghosts. And in the end, you slipped a broken teacup ring on my finger, and I looked up into your wide eyes and they said it all.