So many things you don’t understand: starting with me.
Years have passed, and I can still feel your hands on my skin, slick and cool. If I close my eyes, I can see our late nights together, laughing over whiskey, Billie Holiday playing in the background.
The way you looked at me—that fierce, concentrated attention that sent flames all through my body, like Haley’s comet. Your hand caressing my face, your eyes whispering, “You and me, forever.”
This was real. This was happening.
You told me, “You make me feel so alive.”
How special I felt, forever locked in that moment, hours exploring each other—a dedicated, ravenous passion.
I melted in your words, so full of care and consideration, and the world buzzed around us, as if supporting our dazzling infatuation. Two souls intrinsically drawn, crossed, erased, and brought together again.
I would search for you in every room, each crowded subway station.
After we broke up, you held my photograph to your chest, remembering. The way we laughed, as if we were born to know each other.
You remember, and it takes your breath away, knowing that we existed. That we lived on the earth at the same time.
But I will not know it—because I am here, and you are there.
• • •
I always knew that we would not make it. That fate had other plans, plans too big for us.
The last moment between us: “I will never forget you,” I said.
There were tears pouring down my face. Because I had never loved anyone so much, and none of it mattered.
You held me in your arms, and we wept together, wept for all the things we could not say. Then you touched my chin and said, “I don’t want to leave.”
“Then don’t,” I said, begging.
Why had life driven a wedge between us? So many obstacles.
“If it’s not meant to be, then you can’t make it be,” my mother said. But it didn’t make me feel any better.
There was a bullet hole where my heart used to be, and my love bled everywhere—
Over the park benches, the subway seats, the public library, the sidewalk, the alleyways—
“We can make this work,” I said.
“How? We’ve tried so many times.”
“I know—but we can try again.”
At last, you held my shoulders, kissed my forehead.
“Maybe someday,” you said, which was synonymous with “not ever again.”
Then you got on the train to San Francisco, and you never came back.
At night, I swear I can hear your footsteps, tiptoeing through the kitchen, looking for a snack. Maybe stuffed crust pizza, cut from a box and popped in the oven.
In my bed I would cry, “Augustus, Augustus,” as if you could hear me.
I could have visited you in San Francisco. I would dream about it every day, seeing you again. The joy that would exude from me.
Careless, careless love.
But it was not to be. Within two weeks, I got the call.
“Augustus has been shot,” the voice said.
The voice of whom—it doesn’t matter. It wasn’t your voice, Augustus.
Don’t go outside, someone should have said. You will be struck by a stray bullet, one not meant for you.
And yet it had been. How cruel that the bullet was in your fate, and I was not. Pricked by the Divine. The powers that be.
I could still hear your words, whispering in my mind: “You and me, forever.”
Elizabeth Laughlin is a doctoral student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been published by Modern Language Studies, October Hill Magazine, and Vernon Press.
Modern Flash Fiction 