55

10.6.07

October sixth, first snow. Wwsshhht transfer he said, pointing his forefingers together so the ladybug could scurry from oe to the other. They dry fucked in front of you on the floor of blockbuster. They got arrested in Texas for indecent exposure. They lied and said they were newlyweds. The three of you once got too stoned to find Coyote Springs in the California desert and you drove the last leg home across the 66 at 4am, conservatively because you had precious cargo in the form of two bodies who were magnetized. At the opera Mongolian actors' Russian dress, blonde wigs, and blue eyeshadow for Onegin looks...off. You sit in the front row, looking down at the flute player in the orchestra waiting for her cue. I love you, Onegin says over and over again in Russian to she of the long yellow braid on the bench and they nearly squash the flowers he brought her with their embrace. She sent you a text message on cocaine from when they were on their way there about sunset and roads. It’s okay, is her anthem, she says it in a singing voice to her high strung friends over and over and again. She has said it to you many times. She drives a black truck and holds her wiener dog's tough guy collar as he leans out the window. She drove to Tajiguas and filled a bottle up with sand. She left him after while together in Idaho. It wasn’t that he was good news. It’s that she, who was not a lover of school, wrote you an email that said the part of her heart that was hoping was crushed. The writing itself brought you to your knees, but it isn’t even that, it’s her eyes, bright windows, sky above the pacific where you knotted keychain bracelets beside her. We have a gnarly connection, she said when she told you of her plans to move to Idaho to be with him, I'm going to go see what it’s about. You see as you walk past the construction projects that they are wearing their hoods up and the fingers of their gloves have been sliced off at the knuckle. It’s not that you’ll miss him, it’s that her heart now has a pain in it like a manzanita tree silhouette, dark and veinlike. You leave the opera halfway through and emerge to newly pale mountains and a metallic scent to the air, sky mottled purple and mountains white as forever. She has some of his ashes. One of the women who came down into the orchestra pit so as to sing during the orchard scene is not in costume, she stands with a purple sweater and jeans amid bright dresses and fake braids. You could not understand why they would paint only two trees—birches--but put orchard fruit all over the stage floor. Forgetting is what takes the longest. Fifteen hours of time zones apart. Adolescents circle the Buddhist prayer pole three times, touching in the freeze under that endless roof of sky. The only one farther away from her than you.