w i n t e r
stolon
I should have written it down last night. I should have come home from the bar and written it down. It was only two words. Two words that held the key to paragraphs. I remember telling myself I'd remember. I'm sure you've done the same.
Writing about it now won't help. Retracing the steps. No good. It's gone.
My class went from 18 to 8. 10 washed out or quit, who knows. They left. Out of the 8 of us, 7 showed for the final. One shot at it. 80 or better to qualify, to graduate ground school as it were. The first in a long set of steps. I was first done and first out. I passed.
It was a bittersweet moment for me because I've come to enjoy school and I'm going to miss it. It was also bittersweet because it's supposed to be a beginning and at this point it may well be the end for me. I don't know. I shook hands with my instructor and headed for the bar.
What else should I have done? I wanted a drink. To drink. Drunk, right? Well, yeah, last night that was the plan. I'd earned it. Then I hear about her. I hear about her problems. I know she's dying. Really dying. She's been dying as long as she can remember and there's nothing anybody can do. She's only 18. Only 18 and dying.
Things like this happen when we're at our peak. They remind us. I'm sitting at the bar and I know something is about to happen from the look in his eyes and I know it's gonna be bad and yet beautiful as all words are that escape his lips.
I know I'm being ambiguous here, out of character for me, but I'm doing it out of respect, or at least trying. This is all true, I was just sitting there and it comes out. She's dying. Dying and they just met. Dying and he may go away. Dying.
Why does the one that shakes him free from his wandering eyes have to be dying? Poetic justice?
I want the one I can't have?
She's traveled everywhere and he didn't believe me. He told me that too. That he didn't have faith in me. He didn't believe we could touch people. I mean really touch them. I told him we did. We have. Not just on her walls but on plenty of others too. It was just something he had to see.
And now I can't remember the two words.
I've sobered up and forgotten.
goodnight 12.15.98