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Scream


Let's go screaming together.

I'll bring the Dr Pepper and you bring your corvette, and we'll drive to the bottom of the hill in the park and run up it at midnight trench coats blowing behind us and slowing us down and we'll scream our lungs out.

And when we collapse we'll spread the blanket and drink caffeine til our stomachs are full and we'll light off fireworks and pretend we're having the time of our lives on the Fourth of July in England.

Then later when we're cold and wet from the thunderstorm we saw coming but couldn't say no to and tired of hiding in the bushes from the cops who think "Park Closes at 10" is something to be enforced we'll go driving down Maynstreat with your speakers thudding until it drowns out the twin rhythms of our hearts.

Later on the bridge you'll balance and I'll just watch you, frozen, waiting for the inevitable, pretending it will come slouching embarrassedly up and hand over the punch line sheepishly, with a muttered, "Sorry."

No harm no foul?

No crime we committed could be as big as what didn't happen tonight. Without. Without soda or cars or parks or clouds or bridges. Alone with the dull haunting glow of the internet (world at my fingertips) I think it is a empty universe without you.

Tomorrow I will go lay flowers and then we will be through. I will tell the daydreams I don't want to play anymore and give your old hoodie to Goodwill. Then I will forget, and we will both be happy.

Satisfied?

I thought you might say that, so I'm keeping the CD you burned, and the photograph with the broken frame, and the old note that turned up in my too-small jacket's hidden pocket yesterday.

Yesterday when it smelled like fall and I went outside to play with the dog so I didn't hear the phone ring and I had to hear it from the answering machine three hours later just as it was getting dark and the lightning storm in the southwest started up.

I watched it for a long time from the back deck and thought about running and trench coats and fireworks and tired looking policemen. Holding your hand underneath scratchy brown leaves and trying not to laugh.

When I told the horrible joke you buried your face in your hands and shook like you were coming apart and I knew you were laughing so I just sat there grinning smugly, but that was before we thought about screaming. Before regulations and serious looking men with long strings of capital letters after their names and white sheets and that cafeteria food smell worked its way into everything.

Before you told me to go home before they gave me a room, too. Before the day that ached of gorgeous red and gold leaves and light jackets and crisp winds, and I wanted to take a picture for you because all you could see from your window was the neon word "Memorial" on the end of the sign and the dirty parking lot. But my home snapshots never turn out and anyway you can't smell photographs.

Now I think about screaming, and I think we should have screamed together, and maybe somebody would have taken notice, and maybe I wouldn't be picking out the matching black shoes that are too shiny from lack of use and watching the blacktop flee under the wheels of my unabashedly orange car as I make my way towards the black gathering on the far side of town.

There are clouds in the sky. I pass the park, a cop car, cross the bridge. Some old truck backfires and I swear I hear firecrackers going off and I almost, almost, look up at the sky.

Let's go screaming together.

I'll start.