Come Back

I sat on the floor and stared at you lying on the bed. My back ached from leaning against the wall, arms tingling from resting on my legs. But I don’t want to move. I don’t want to leave. I can’t leave you again.

Through your frozen smile you say “You have to leave eventually.”

My stiff neck creaks as it lifts the boulder of my head. The skin of my cheeks is tight, crinkling from evaporated tears. There were none left to shed. “I don’t want to.”

“It’s not about want.”

You lay on your back, head turned to look at me. The slight smile that set off nova bursts in my chest played on your lips. Dark hair draped over your cheeks and chest. You are a vision.

“Im sorry,” I say.

“It’s okay.”

“This isn’t.”

With a rattling sigh you sat up, crackling like your body was stuffed with dry twigs, your movements those of a tangled marionette. Each snapping twitch made me whimper. When your legs dangled over the edge you trembled forward, elbows on knees, chin resting delicate on your hands. “You called me.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Yes you did.” A finger slid from the shadows beside me, brushing my cheek. Your finger, though your hands didn’t move. It was long, with extra knuckles. The sight made me shudder but the touch melted me so I closed my eyes.

“I miss you so much.”

“And I you.”

“You deserved better.”

“That wasn’t your call.”

My head fell back, banging against the wall. “I hate this.”

“Me too.”

“Then why are you here?” My eyes opened as I lowered my head. You were inches from my face, balanced on the balls of your feet. Leaning forward at an impossible angle, chin still resting on your hands.

“You are why I’m here.”

I squeezed my necklace until the flesh of my palm bruised. “How does this work?”

When you leaned back it was one fluid, soundless motion. The bed barely registered your weight, like you were a cat. “How its supposed to.”

I scoffed. “I hate riddles.”

Your eyes narrowed in annoyance. “Don’t be flippant. This is a gift.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

With a sigh, you straightened. I tried not to stare at the body I knew so well. Something rippled through your curves, under your skin. Another shape. Similar but different. It was brief; there and gone, leaving only the nostalgic memory of you, though it clung as a dress to the frame of something else. “Everything is a gift or a lesson, if viewed right.” You struck a pose that toyed with my desires.

“Please,” I begged. “Tell me what I need to do.”

Another flash of annoyance, but something else too. Pity? “We both have our separate roles. Take your time and work it out. I’ll be here.”

“You won’t leave?” I dreaded either response.

You held your hand up, middle and pointer raised. “Promise.”

I lowered my aching head and and let my thoughts wander. Your smell lingered in the room so there was only one place they would go. For once, I didn’t fight it.

* * *

I banged on your door. Rough knocks with a closed fist, like a cop. “Denise!” I yelled. It hurt. “Open the door!” I’d been yelling into the phone most of the night. At your voicemail. Friends. Family. They didn’t listen or had stopped caring. Your mother had been the last.

“I’ll always remember my little girl,” she’d said. “But she’s been gone a long time.”

I’d swore at her for several minutes, long after she hung up. They didn’t understand. We grew up together. Had the same demons. Fought the same battles. Waged the same inner war. We’d never dated. Tried it out, but it didn’t last. I loved you but it was one sided. Compatible in every way, but it wasn’t enough. We haunted each other in different ways and for different reasons.

After yelling myself hoarse for several minutes and a lot more knocking, I lost patience. Kicked the door in. In that apartment complex it wouldn’t even get the police called. The smell hit me first; lavender and vanilla with a hint of cinnamon. A combination of her shampoo and body lotion. Made it easy to overlook the subtler scent beneath.

Couldn’t ignore it when I stumbled into her bedroom.

You wore the oversized band shirt we stole at our first concert and small shorts. Your skin was pale. Eyes cloudy. Lips slightly parted. Hair draped over her shoulders. Pill bottle on the night stand. Empty. Jim beam bottle atop a stain on the carpet.

I sank to the floor and looked into your milky eyes. Didn’t know I was screaming till neighbors banged on the wall and told me to shut the hell up. Took an hour before I could talk through the sobs enough and called the police.

Took another for them to show.

* * *

“That was a rough day.”

“No shit.” I wiped at my dry tingling eyes. “Worst day of my life.”

“Three years gone and here we are.”

“You’re not her.”

She crossed her legs, hands gripped over her knee.

“Get to the point,” I spat.

She smirked. “It’s your show.”

Regret and guilt swirled in my chest. Threatened to erupt and suffocate me. I began to hyperventilate. It felt like I was dying. She watched with that fucking smile.

“Need help?”

“N..no,” I stuttered. “P-panic. Attack.”

Hands (hers but also not) bled from the wall. Ran up my back. Squeezed my shoulders. She uncrossed her legs and knelt before me. I hugged myself. Her hands rested over mine, over my shoulders, rubbed my back.

I hated it.

I wished it would never stop.

Our foreheads touched and she whispered. “Easy breezy. Soon you’ll see. Match your warring breath with me.” She took a long deep breath in. I tried to match with a hiccuping inhale. We held it. Then a long Exhale. Minutes took hours. Together we got my breathing under control. I relaxed. Her hands pulled mine to her lap and rubbed them between her fingers.

Just like her.

Not being able to weep didn’t keep me from trying. “You came up with that stupid rhyme when we were kids.”

She pulled my head to her breast and stroked my hair. “Not stupid.”

“You saved me so many times.”

“We saved each other.”

“Im sorry I wasn’t there.”

“I didn’t want you there.”

“Why?” I found a few more tears to twist free. They burned like acid.

She sighed. “We were close but not the same person. What makes sense to me won’t to you.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes. I do.”

I shoved at her. It was like pushing against stone, so I knocked myself into the wall.

“Can’t push away the truth.”

I couldn’t resist rolling my eyes. “The meaning was not lost on me.”

“Just because you get it doesn’t mean you get it.” She pressed a finger against my forehead, lifting it up so I had to look at her. The face was beautiful. Picturesque. Serene. The finger pressed against me had a needle for a nail. It pierced the skin, blood trickling over my face. “You need to get it.”

WIth shaking hands I pulled hers away. My forehead wept blood. “I do.”

“I hope so.”

I wiped my face and then my jeans, leaving bloody, sweeping wings. “Come back to me.”

“Thats not how this works.”

“You can’t?”

She sighed. “I can do anything.” Not a brag, but said with immense sadness. “But only what I want.”

“I’ll do anything.”

Her hand brushed against my cheek. It was warm and soft, but made the hairs on my skin prickle so stiff it made my cheeks ache. “You did everything you could.”

“But you aren’t here.”

“Im what you asked for.”

Though my body remained upright, I collapsed. Everything inside me deflated. Crashed to bedrock, leaving a void of cold and static. An emptiness with no horizon. My eyes were open and she, as I remembered when last I saw her alive, stood before me. Cupping my cheek. Smiling. I could smell her. It was all exactly what I wanted and the hurt it caused tried to fill that immense emptiness and couldn’t.

“Stop,” she said.

There was no stopping a maelstrom of everything wrong:

Regret that I couldn’t be there. Couldn’t help her like she helped me. That she hadn’t trusted me. Talked to me. That I hadn’t seen some sign, been able to just tell, like she had so often for me. To SENSE something was wrong.

Anger that she didn’t trust me. Or I hadn’t earned it. Replaying every interaction and phone conversation, analyzing everything said and fantasizing about everything I or she could have done. That it was a choice: a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Anguish because it may have been a mistake. A lethal mixture, sure, but not one unusual for either of us when we were lost. And she hadn’t taken ALL the pills. Hadn’t drank ALL the bourbon. It could have been an accident.

Despair because it didn’t matter. It was done. No note. No last message. None of her geographically convenient friends noticed any signs and those of us kept at a distance were in the dark, many willingly.

The trifecta fed on each other, not fission, but fusion, growing till I thought I would burst with it, yet the emptiness remained. Eating it. Feeding. I was so full yet so hollow all at once.

“Look at me.”

“I am.” But she was just a familiar shape full of needles and fire. Her hand on my cheek was razor wire. That smile drilled into me. Those smells choked me with its memory.

My hand reached into my pocket and removed the bottle of pills.

“Calm down.”

I fumbled with the top.

“Don’t.”

Her hands enshrouded mine. Stilled them.

“That’s not why we’re here,” she said.

“I am.”

“You can lie to yourself. But not to me.”

Those words shattered me. How often had I been called on my own bullshit by her with those words? The emptiness throbbed. It could hold all my pain but overflowed with those words.

My body found a reserve of tears and I broke down. Each stung like molten metal. The bottle slipped from our hands and rolled across the floor. She let me cry against her chest. Her skin was warm but slick. Sweating was a problem we’d both always had. I squeezed hard, trying to disappear into her. Keep her with me. It didn’t work. I cried cry harder.

“I miss you so much.”

“I miss you too.”

“I wish-”

“Stop.” She pulled away and held me at arm’s length. “You just tipped away from that abyss. Don’t lean back into it.”

I nodded. “Can you hold me a little longer? Till Im ready to leave.”

She smiled. “A day. A week. A year. However long it takes.”

We sat like that for hours. She hummed. Sang all the songs she used to love. Hearing Creep in her soft cadence made me break down anew. It was like draining pus from a wound.

I fell asleep in her lap. Woke up hours later to find the warring factions of furious anger and consuming depression facing off, but also at a distance. I could breathe around them. Even think for more than a few minutes without her memory twisting my guts. Hadn’t had that since I’d found her.

“You’re ready,” she said.

“I need more time.”

She stroked my hair. “More will be a step back.”

I pressed my face against her thigh. “I don’t want you to go.”

“No.” Her hands slid down my neck to my necklace. “But its what you need. Why you wear my sigil.”

Dehydration made my parched mouth puffy, my dry eyes ache and burn. My lids were sandpaper when I blinked. “I didn’t think you’d come. I heard you were a de-”

“Do I seem like one?” she snapped.

“No.”

“That’s why I don’t like labels.”

I sat up and turned the necklace in my hand, watching the light slide around its curves and edges. “I’m surprised I was able to summon you. As…her.”

She shrugged. “You asked me to bring her back. I go where I please. When I please. Im drawn by intent.”

“Im sorry for doubting.”

“We all do, for a time.” Her presence shifted back to the bed, soft and quiet as a leaf on a breeze.

When I looked up, she was on the bed, head turned to the side again. Same as when I found her. “I miss you.”

She smiled, her eyes going milky. “It’s time.”

With a nod, I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath. “I miss you with every atom of my being. Every fiber of my soul. But you are gone. I’ll never know why, never know enough. It will always hurt. I’ll carry you with me for the rest of my life, and I’ll always miss you.”

A sigh slid through the room like a fall breeze. When I opened my eyes the bed was empty, though it still held the outline of her body and her scent haunted the air. My mouth opened to call her back. But I didn’t.

I got to my feet. Walked to the door. Opened it and stood in the glow of the full moon, a chilly breeze ruffling my hair. I couldn’t smile, but my lips pressed into a firm line.

“Goodbye.”