Why I’m Not Where You Are by Brianna Albers

whereareyoupress:

after Thomas Patrick Levy’s “Lost”

I. 

When you died on the street I knew I was dreaming. You asked me why and I said I didn’t know and you said you were sorry and I still don’t know what for. I said it’s fine. Your body jerked like something was leaving and I held you under the summer streetlight, listened to a quiet hum as time and the cicadas died. 

When you died on the street the second time I knew I was dreaming and I promised you I would always be where you are. You died laughing, like the time we watched that movie with that one actor from that one show and you said you missed your mother and there was nothing I wanted more than to steal your mother’s corpse from the casket in the graveyard where she forgot to breathe. I can’t make things better. I thought it’s not supposed to be like this, I thought when did we get so small.

When you died on the street a third time I knew I was dreaming so I kissed you on the curb with your body in my lap. You did not kiss back. I kept thinking the universe is a glass of spilled milk. I closed my eyes and did not cry.

II.

It was morning and our hearts leaked around us when I told you the sheets needed to be washed. We did the laundry in a beautiful room with thin white walls and you made a sound like a dying animal and I thought, listen, this is why I’m not where you are.