What was once
remembering at 2:29 p.m. on 2003-07-06
This is the first time I have seen her in over a year.
The mythical girl, who they all said would never make it out alive. Sitting in the dimly lit restaurant, staring back at me absently.
Her colorfully beaded bracelets, and cheap pink and lavender plastic rings brushing across cold table top as she reaches to fiddle carelessly with her silverware.
N and I speak between each other fluidly, but her words seem to catch on us with a snarl of inconsistency. She speaks too loudly and too fast for us to relate. We smile, out of respect? respect of our pasts together, I'll never know.
She goes into stories of her girlfriends, who passed days...months with her in a
drug induced stupor. How Arie is so beautiful, so poised. How she wishes she looked like her. How fat she is getting now that she quit rolling.
It's painful to watch this girl. 19...you lived so close to my heart for so long.
Dark summer nights curled next to each other in the eerie light of your fishtank, laughing...hands in bowls of blackberries we'd frozen into ice. Living by the phone...walking in your cutest pair of shoes.
Yes, you are just a shell now. This bony, dark eyed frailty of abandonment. This skeleton in bright, baggy clothes. That voice that used to sing to me in the lunchroom hall, now spidery and too awkward to control.
You don't even know who you are.
N and I pretend to not be mortified.
We pretend that nothing has changed, and never will...some trace of offense in your eyes when we ever let on that you are missing. That you are disgusting. That we are afraid of you.
I want to hold you down and scream at you in anger. You stupid, stupid girl.
Didn't you know we loved you more than emptiness you filled in your body, with the smoke from your pipe. With the dust in your nose. With those tiny twenty dollar pills.
You are laughing, and I pull myself around again to smile. Your hands fishing around in a cheap vinyl purse.
"Look..." you snort, as if you are suddenly struck with brilliance.
A tiny vile. N and I stare, our forks still on our plate. The air conditioner up too high for this time of year. The clanging on glasses in our ears. Hollow and invasive.
You unscrew the lid to the red colored syrup and deposit 2 fat droplets into the thick, bright mixture. You stir it with the end of your fork, and are consumed with delight.
N and I stare at our plates and force broken smiles. The rest is just a blur of short conversations and social trips to the bathroom.
I stare at you quietly as you flirt with the cashier. Reaching across the table, I slide the syrup into my purse, and shake my head.
I miss you.
never was � never will be
