To You

I painted the room purple today. I don’t know what to do with it now. You said purple is the color of royalty, so I picked out the richest color.
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Flying a kite on the beach seemed like a good idea. You loved kites. I loved beaches. But when you got the kite up, there was no where to run without castles or kids. The seagulls and sun were getting in your eyes.
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You said you’d never love another girl. I knew that wasn’t right so I found you another to love. But she wasn’t the girl you really loved. That one is the girl you knew long before we met. That made me happy, at least that day it did.
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When the train wrecked, they evacuated the entire town. You headed straight for the accident, had to see for yourself the cars on their sides, the chemicals leaking over the embankment into the creek that ran by the school. Had to see the engineer breathing for the last time. You had to make sure. You didn’t want to leave the house for nothing.
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The dead aren’t gone until they are buried, or cremated or otherwise disposed of. Until then, who knows. Isn’t that what you told me?
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You walk through the shadows of the valley of death, and I fear evil. I feel no comfort and the burden is more than I can handle. Somehow my name must have gotten mixed up with yours.
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If I dreamed of you it would be in blue. There would be a boat and an island. And maybe a dog. You’d call him Sam and let him sleep with you. People would love you because of Sam.
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When you didn’t call my name that night I knew you were gone. Your body sweaty and restless is nothing new. I can feel that in my sleep. But the stillness, that’s new. The gentle breathing, peaceful movement as you reposition yourself, the quiet almost unperceivable whisper of my name not called is something new. I heard it.
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When the room stopped spinning you fell down and looked for a way out. The exists were there as had been all along. Why hadn’t you known this?
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The drive-in wasn’t a place to watch movies. It was a place for you to spike your coke with Jack Daniels and order food and sit in the truck bed and talk to friends.
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Are you still around? In 1996 two people died. In 1998 someone died. In 2003 someone died. I don’t think anyone has died since then. What have you heard?
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You added pine cleaner to the water, you wanted to mask the remnants of prior occupants. The carpet in the bathroom was stained and unchangeable, but the drawers were clean.
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Betty from the grocery store asked about you, wanted to know how you were holding up after the oil refinery shut down. She said her nephew was in Taiwan but wasn’t doing so well after learning that his wife took his daughter and moved in with the truck driver who kept sitting at her counter. I told her it was hard to tell, I hadn’t heard from you in a few days.
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I sat crying in the little rocking chair my grandfather made for me and my grandmother covered with quilt block pieces. My mother had sent me to my room because I kept asking her for juice as she stood at the front door talking to the lady who lived across the street and two houses down. Her husband had been fishing and they couldn’t find his boat and it had been over ten hours now. It was a small lake. I swore I would never make my daughter cry when I grew up. You told me the same thing.
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I was remembering how you told me never to wear your t-shirts to bed because it made them wear out faster. I was tying newspapers to recycle when I thought of this and I wondered what ever happened to that box of books I bought and you promised to send, but never did.
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The doctor said you were going to be fine. He said fear of falling will scar you worse than the cut on your forehead will.