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By
Melissa Joy Meyers
I took a walk in the snow today
so I could try to remember that soft static sound that snowflakes make when
they float through the air. All it made me think of was that Valentine’s Day
when you and I got snowed in together. There was that delicate layer of ice
over the snow, we looked like plain fools trying to skate across it in your
backyard, balancing our weight and trying not to fall into the wet, icy mess
that lay beneath. And we snuck into that old rickety hay barn your mom never
let us go into “because it’s just not safe, damn it” to play card games like
War and Fish and there was that sweet smell of straw. When we laughed, the
warm air came out of our mouths in short little bursts of funny visible song.
Then we left and you chased me down to the lake behind your house, me screaming
and hollering all the way. And we finally made it to the bank and we fell
back onto the snow, closing our eyes, pretending that something other than
the crunchy snow would break our fall. And we lay there in that watery blueness
of night with some purple clouds and a yellow moon and stars like grains of
sugar in the sky. You said that us holding mittens and looking up at the sky,
just like this, could be the album cover for some acoustic artist. We held
mittens all the way back up to your house where your mom told us that “we’d
better not get snow on the damn carpet” so we made Argentinean smoked tea
and English muffin sandwiches with maple sugar and took them up to your room
where we watched Raising Arizona and laughed under the covers all night
with the moon flashing down at us.
Before it got cold enough for
the lake to freeze, it had been autumn and we had been sitting on park benches
listening to “Blood on the Tracks” and watching the leaves turn into colors
that can only be replicated in a 96-crayon Crayola
box. We ate clementines in my garden and talked
about how plants are born underneath the ground and rise above the dirt only
to fall back into the mud in the end. It was windy and I told you about trains
I had once seen and you talked about your old house with its bats and its
pool. That was the day I found that picture that you drew of me that you didn’t
want me to see. I asked why you drew it and you said give it back and I said
that it was a picture of me so that meant it was mine. You called me illogical
and I called you an artist and then we held hands and we didn’t call each
other anything else.
You always told me that spring was your favorite
season and I never quite knew why. Those silly dainty
flowers growing everywhere and all that hope and bunnies
and rejuvenation were just too much for me. What I did
like, though, was how the baby buds on the trees made
the branches look like they were spray-painted with
lime green. But that spring, even the first stem of
a tulip crawling out from the dead leaves didn’t make
me feel better about anything. You told me that I was
just making myself sad, that they invented the postal
system and cell phones and email for people keeping
in touch and that we were going to use all of them.
The night before I left our mountains and our lakes
and our trees, our Vermontan town, Joppa Magnolia, before I took the train out
to Oregon, I cried and cried and clung onto your shirt.
You told me to stop, that I was going to make you
cry too, that best friends never really say goodbye,
that this wasn’t any sort of end.
The next morning we woke up and
ate banana waffles and packed my stuff into your station wagon. Even the sight
of my 88-year-old neighbor Frank chopping the wineberry vines that had crept up on his mailbox with a machete
couldn’t make me smile as we drove away. I could hear my train way before
I could see it, singing that long and lonely song. You bought me a Vanilla
Coke and a paperback mystery in the station for my ride and I forgot to thank
you because I was too busy thinking that it wasn’t too late, that I didn’t
have to go so far away. I could call my landlord in Oregon and tell her to
shove it, we could buy that apartment we looked at and live together and go
to a community school. But then my engine rolled in and you walked me out
to the platform and before I knew what I wanted to say to you, we were kissing,
your mouth on mine, telling each other what all the words in the world couldn’t,
no matter how long we stayed on this platform. And I picked up my bags and
got on the train and told you thank you from the door, even though I was grateful
for a lot more than the soda and book. I got a window seat that seemed too
small and the train smelled like it had been running all night and I looked
out the window to watch you as I rolled away. You were crying.
And now it’s summertime and it’s
hot everywhere, parts of me sweat that I didn’t even know existed. In a couple
of weeks, we’ll get together and drive too fast and sleep too little. I’ll
take you to cheap motel diners at the base of extraordinarily large mountains
where you’ll tell me about your painting and sculptures made out of old car
parts and I’ll tell you about social working and case studies. We might go
to that lake behind your house with some lawn chairs and some beers and talk
about the nights that we used to camp in the backyard and read Le Petite
Prince aloud to each other until we fell asleep. After a while of nostalgic
laughing, we’ll stop talking and we’ll listen to the symphony of crickets
all around us. I’ll ask what you miss the most about me being around here?
You’ll remind me of that time
that we parked in the lot of Joppa Magnolia Park and it was snowing outside
and we stayed in the car with the heat on, listening to bluegrass on the AM
radio. We decided to have a conversation without words, just by talking with
our eyes. We spent the better part of that afternoon looking into each other.
I watched the shininess and the sparkling of you, thinking that your eyes
could tell me more than your language. Then it got cold and dark and the radio
program ended and you put the car in drive and we drove home, not speaking
at all. I’ll nod and stare at the ground because I won’t be able to look you
in the eyes when I ask you what you were trying to say. I’ll hear that genuine
tenderness in your voice when you say that you were telling me how happy,
how complete I make you feel. I’ll have to blink back that burning water in
my eyes and I’ll get a grip on my voice so it doesn’t choke when I tell you
that the day we had to say goodbye was the hardest thing I’ve have to do and
everyone seems boring compared to you, sometimes I have long epic dreams and
they’re always about you in the end and maybe you were the first boy I ever
fell in love with, isn’t that a funny thing to say. You’ll let that beat of
silence go by, then you’ll stand up and stretch and reach out your hand for
me, smiling. You’ll tell me that you’ve been waiting a long time for me to
come home, for us to be together again and now you’re tired and would I like
to go to bed now.
Melissa Joy Meyers graduated in June from Sandy Spring
Friends School and will be attending the University
of Vermont in the fall.
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