About

          Imagine a boy. Fresh to the world. Crying, squealing, growing. Now he’s a toddler. Waddling, falling, learning. Now he’s in first grade. Drawing, running, climbing. Now elementary school is over. He’s played his first baseball game, he’s won a spelling bee, he’s struggling in algebra. Now, this boy is getting older faster. Life speeds by in a whirlwind as the years shuffle past. He’s made it to his freshman year of high school, he’s just learning to like girls. Suddenly, the boy is taller, his voice is deeper, all changing in a single summer. In the fall he learns how men and women can complete each other. He experiences heartbreak. The high school years slag on, and suddenly he’s walking across the stage at graduation, horizon in front of him, home behind him, eyes glistening with hope of changing the world. He moves off to college, shedding a single tear. Or two. And on nights when he feels most alone and thinks no one is watching it rains. A month in, he learns the taste of liquor against his lips. The rest of the semester careens past as forgotten nights drift through. It ends in a tempest of overwhelming anxiety the tests come sailing in on. In the next semester you see the boy’s friends fall apart. Through the nights they smiled, but by no fault of the boy the smiles grow colder each time they visit. They slowly tear themselves away, leaving him behind for smarter, funnier, more talented, cooler, better friends. Fair weather friends. The boy learns he is going to be graduating not only with a degree, but with a storm cloud that may never quite leave his head. His first year ends and the boy is barely hanging on. He finds a job during the summer and spends his days in the safe harbor of his golden summer dreams. But gray skies follow the boy back to school, and nothing seems like it will ever be good again. But then he met you. And everything was okay. You talked. You laughed. You created your place in a hectic world together. He met your parents. You met his parents. Both approved, of course, because you’re you, and he’s him. And together you were. You stayed with the boy, you struggled through life with the boy and the boy helped you and you helped the boy and he was so thankful and as the second year passed the boy told you he loved you and you said you loved him, too. Under warm blankets by the fireplace you weathered the violent winter in his arms. Watching the snowy skies, you learned you completed each other, until the sun rose again, and the boy’s world was good. You became his anchor. You kept him tied down when the wind tried to sweep him away. And all the skies were calm. Until they weren’t. The boy didn’t know when it happened. When the storm raged around him and the clouds choked him out. He had so many questions drowning his head. When did you started pulling away. Why did you pull away. If it was my fault. If there was anything I could have done to change how it ended. If in the end you still loved me like I still love you. Could you tell me where it all went wrong, what I did to drive you away like this. I never wanted things to go this way, you were the wind at my back and the sun on my skin, and without you there’s just a shipwreck of forgotten promises. If you could just say something to me to give me some sort of reason why, if you would just talk to me, because I don’t know what is going on anymore. Would it fix things if I say I’m sorry? Because, if so, I’m sorry! I’m sorry.

 

-For my cat, Harmon, who hissed at me when I came home and inspired this story

While the story may not be about you, I'm sorry I made you so upset