Sunday, December 9, 2007

Graduation day

I once asked a girl how her day had been.
Back when.
She had turned 18 half a year before me and we...
of course,
we had it made back then.
She offered me her hand before lowering herself to the floor onto her bony knees in the bathroom of her momma's house.
I slid down the wall without letting go...
I dared not let go of this hand I held.
I shook while I lit the end of her half smoked old cig. Leaning in, I could not stop thinking about how pink her lips looked right then. I could not forget to remember how they puckered the day before when i lent her my shiny new gloss. The kind with all the sparkles and a shimmer like my nails against her wrists.
I had held her there. Watching. Wordless. Worried and weird about this and that.
I knew why.
Under a hat she hid. She and a bottle or six.
Spewing.
Something about a boy. And something else, maybe a girl. More fingers and toes. Lips not yet pink. Sniffling.
gone she said. like he had already been.
This life was gone. As we knew it.. "it" was just just just blood on the floor in a place colder than the wrists she threatened to cut. I promised not to let go.
So I held her there.
Something about a bottle or six.
I felt the blood on my hands from listening so close. But I would hold her till she could take off her hat, pick herself up and sparkle again.

No comments: