Runaway (2)

I heard him singing on the corner curb. I hid halfway. Saw him dancing on the litter. I watched as they laughed-him and his friends. They were visual echoes of their spirits. Life’s a bitch; I never understood why he loved her. I thought I was born with the better deal. A prairie house in the Upton Hills. Yet they laughed harder still.

Behind their windows some residents were staring. I felt the skirt of the winter chill. My skeleton shivered inside me.

I thought of walking away. Thought of trying my luck on a home for strays. I felt my body temperature rising, but I held my tears for a drier day. I didn’t want to phantom-menace him, and just appear out of nowhere.” Baby, baby, I’ve come to live with you. Be with you for the rest of our lives!” It’d be beyond words if, out of the blue, someone claimed half of my life reel. Would he even want me there at all? If I were with him, would he know to miss me? I was once his escape from the reality he lived in.

I remember. We met under the same umbrella on a rainy May. We found common interests on a common day. I loved him. I knew right away. I don’t know what love is, but I know that it doesn’t ask reason for the right of way.

I got closer. Broke a dry leaf’s heart on the litter floor. That’s when he saw me. They saw me. Dirt mask boys. I stood there like a goofy question mark. I didn’t belong. It wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. Puffy red eyes and a ticking bomb mind.

I couldn’t tell you when, but It was heaven when he held me. I couldn’t tell you how, but my feet never actually left the ground, and the world was forever dizzy, and my heart wrote sonnets.

I found in his eyes the answers that I’d been looking for, that maybe Life can be lenient, and maybe risks can be rewarding.
***
That night was cold; I slept in the warmth of his belly on a hard cardboard box next to a jar of dead fireflies. Live tonight, I begged of them, die when it’s sunny. That night I saw darkness grin. That night, his friends and their mom snored like angry waves at a cliff’s shore. That night, the hours had names and their chatter were louder than their snoring. They didn’t care. All was asleep. The children. The murderers. The millionaires.The angels. Yet they laughed harder still