because you

I could see her. She was standing right beside me, her sea foam eyes blinking against tears that only seemed to call when happiness arrived, never sadness.

I smiled and nodded vaguely toward her. "Happy?" I – how would she have put it? – let go of the reins.

Finally.

She reached over, touching my hand. Her fingers began to play with my fingers and the scraping of her nails against my nails sort of soft and warm at the same time and the sound of her breathing against my chest hardly moving. I leaned forward, touching a single tear away from her cheek, damping it against the collar of my shirt, where all of her tears belonged. In just her look: I could see the past seventeen hours, a plethora of events faded into one drastic coloratura, life's most tragic piece touching its end and reaching new heights and touching new beginnings.

"Let them go," she whispered now, speaking soft, and presumably of the infamous reins.

Which I just loathed the thought of . . . "Yes, dear." But I was glad to say that word again. Dear. Mm. Not the kind trapped inside of headlights at night on your way into the city or on your way home from work or on your way to band practice, but the formal – not formal, romantic – kind; the heading at the top of letters kind, the first you read before basically a masterpiece of a thousand I-love-yous kind, every one of them truer than the last . . .

Is that was this was? Was it . . . true?

"I" – wanted to ask her if this was really happening. "I" – needed to know the truth.

"Let them go," she said again, quite calmly, and I took her gentle hands in mine. Warmer now than the air around us, or the breath between us, the soft glow illuminating inside of us warmer even than the night hovering over us, warmer even than the night we met and we were wrapped in only a small thin sheet around a soft fire singing songs we hardly knew . . . "Let them go," she said again. And I said, "I did. I have, haven't I?" Again, another loathsome question . . . "Let them go," she said again and so I did. I let them go. I closed my eyes and could feel her hands in mine and her fingers slip and then fall against my chest which heaved and hoed and her warm breath drying the tears on my collar as new tears and of a different make eagerly took their place, and the nighttime growing cold around us and the light inside of us spreading like water being poured I could feel her hands on my chest moving to a different pattern as she whacked me once and then twice, three times and then four, screaming, and the tears which wet my collar now drenched my shirt and saturating my clothes from head to toe, the night once cold now a day so warm, the sun setting along the mystic never-endingness of a horizon which never seemed to end. Finally, her sea foam eyes so close to mine I could see literally nothing else, I said, " . . . I'm sorry, okay? Just know that I'm . . . I-I'm sorry."

"Let them go!" she said and I peered down, realizing my hands were locked. They had been locked for some time now. I'd walked with them locked, praying, and I'd driven with them locked. I'd run praying and now here I lay praying, never more grateful for the she in all my sentences, the one you talk about when you fantasize about your wedding day and you're eleven. "Let them go, let them go!" she said again, them being my hands. I peered down and – that she, and other shes were knelt down beside me, bending over me, pummeling me, fighting and prying at my palms, squeezing my fingers, trying with all their might to tear them apart.

I closed my eyes, then opened them again, squinting not in agony but in delight, a raindrop of tears hot upon my cheek. I blinked and it was gone, then I realized whose tears these were, and although they came from me they belonged completely and wholeheartedly to her; the same her which creates stories and inspires endings, drawing beginnings like the breath of night touching gentle dusks leaving, more unfathomable than the never-endingness of a horizon which stretches beyond every beyond, scraping heights which only touch beginnings and never an end. That's who she is. I say now and I said it always and forever will, speaking gratuitous and small, my every breath fading like footprints trapped inside of sand, here and then gone. Which, I think, is how it should be . . . Created.

And then remembered and never forgotten.

"Let them go . . . " I nodded my head once, blinking and closing my eyes. " . . . please!" I felt her fingers inside mine and the playing of our nails soft and warm and then the slipping of her hand and the hot of her breath sharing with my own upon our own two cheeks, two happinesses mixing – created by her, given to her – which do and will and never will not belong to her.

They belong to her. They belong to her.

"Let them go," she said again, our tears mixing, and I just smiled, not touching but being touched by her, the motion in her hands quick and unsteady, as unprepared as they were diligent.

Even now, I realized, she was careful. So careful . . . Hmm. "Maybe it isn't sea foam," I said, speaking soft.

"What? What'd you say?" She was crying. Why was she crying? " . . . stay with me, baby, do you hear me! Stay with me!"

And all I could think: maybe the transparency in her eyes, what I'd considered not just green but overwhelmingly and sea foam and green wasn't green at all, maybe they were different than all of that. Like there's Tuscan sunset and then there's orange, only one is one thing and the other is, well, another.

"Please . . . " There it was again. That voice. "Stop," she said, "Stop talking about my eyes, just live, okay? Live!" She said it over and over, “live . . . live!” But why was she crying? "I need you," she said, her voice breaking like the branches of a thousand trees break up a fading daytime sky; or like the feet of a thousand crows break an old man's skin . . . "We're supposed to be old together, remember?” Her fingers were warm. They were trembling. “You vowed it and so did I!” she said. “The preacher asked if we do and we did and we're supposed to forever do and this isn't how it ends do you understand me this isn't how it ends, not for you, not for me, and certainly not for us!" Her words broke me like crashing waves break through sand, so shifty, so heavy underwater. "This is it," she said, "it's up to you – but know that I'm here, I'm where I belong.” A pause, she said, “Are you." She wasn't asking. So stubborn. "I love you sweetheart I love you and now you have to choose for me. Find your answer. Search. Then grab it and hold! And when you have it," she said, "fight! Fight like you've never fought before," and the rushing of waves and the crashing of sand castles and the split-open sky caused by branches flailing about against wind just howling on a crisp September night, fading on top of a million trees whispering . . . " . . . do you remember, sweetheart, I told you a secret once," she said now, speaking into my chest like breathing her life into me. "Do you remember?" She'd whispered it in my ear the night we met, underneath the thin and cool of a sheet outside of a fire barely lit, half-asleep, just like the two of us. "You asked me what I liked most about you, and even though we'd just met the answer was obvious. It was clear what I adored most about you. Do you remember what my answer was?"

What a lousy question. Of course I remembered.

"I said my favorite thing about you was that you were going to be mine. You were going to be with me, and that's what I liked most about you. Can you remember?"

Wait, liked?

I could hear her laughing and the steady rhythm inside her chest as she moved, and I could feel familiar tears spreading against the collar of my shirt, soaking through right where they belonged.

No, where they belong . . .