Love Letters to the Dead

I hope one of you hears me. Because the world seems like a tunnel of silence. I have found that sometimes, moments get stuck in your body. They are there, lodged under your skin like hard seed-stones of wonder or sadness or fear, everything else growing up around them. And if you turn a certain way, if you fall, one of them could get free. It might dissolve in your blood, or it might spring up a whole tree. Sometimes, once one of them gets out, they all start to go.

I feel like I am drowning in memories. Everything is too bright. Mom making tea for May and me. Walking home from the pool in a thunderstorm, with the mulberries stained red on our feet. Galloping our imaginary horses through the snowfall. Dad riding away on his motorcycle, with the elm trees raining seeds over him. Mom folding clean shirts into a suitcase. May walking toward the movie theater, her long hair swinging behind her. May’s hand pressed against window glass. They don’t stop.

What I remembered first from that night is the sound of river water. The sound kept moving, steadily, like it would never stop. I saw the bluebell-shaped flowers, popping up between the cracks in the pavement. Two of them trampled, one still cupping the moonlight. The river getting louder, drowning everything with its roar.

We were driving down the old highway, May and me. The night was filling with stars. We had the sunroof open and the music loud and she was singing “Everywhere I Go,” in a voice that was sweet and slow. “Tell me all that I should know…” She knew every up and down and lilt and curl. May started singing so hard, I thought her voice would explode into millions of pieces. I kept my eyes glued upward, watching the stars start to eat the sky alive. I made a wish for her to be happy.

She pushed on the gas, and the car sped like a blast down old Highway 5, into the dark. The speed took all of the sound with it, until there was only the music left. We were alone on the road. She pulled over at our place, where the old train tracks cross over the river. In the springtime you can hear the rushing water. By the end of the summer, it dries up and moves so slowly, you can hardly hear a thing. In the winter, it nearly freezes over. But this was spring. Flowers, everything’s-possible spring.

We first discovered our spot when we’d go on river walks with Mom and Dad as kids. And then May and I started coming here together again, on weekend afternoons when we were supposed to be at the library, or after movie nights like this one. We’d park by the tracks and crawl out on our hands and knees over the wood planks. We would sit there and feel like we were floating. We would play Poohsticks like we did when we were little, searching out the perfect fallen branches and dropping them over the edge of the tracks and into the river, then leaning over the other side to see whose would appear first. We’d say whoever’s stick won would be the first to get to the ocean. We would collect piles of them and play forever. Imagining what great adventures they would have riding the river all the way to the sea. And then we would crawl back to land.

But something different happened that night. We were sitting in the middle of the bridge. I said something I never should have said. May stood up and started to cross back to land on the metal edge of the track, like a tightrope.

I could feel myself begging for her to balance. I wish I could have run out after her, to stop her, to do anything to undo it all. But I couldn’t move. It’s like I had left my body and I was in hers instead. I felt her waver. I kept feeling her fall. It’s like everything that was going to happen had already happened, and I couldn’t do anything but watch it.

And then she turned back to look at me, her dark eyes searching their way through the dark. Wisps of her hair coming loose from her ponytail. Her arms slender and white in the moonlight.

Our eyes met, and in that moment it was real again. I opened my mouth to call her name. But before a sound came, all of a sudden, it’s like the wind just blew her over. Like her body was simply sailing over the blackness below her. She didn’t trip. She didn’t jump. It was as if she floated off. I could swear she stayed there, standing on air for a moment, before she fell.

I can’t stop seeing her body floating there. And all I want to do is run out after her and pull her back. I didn’t save her. My feet were frozen. My voice was broken. I wish I could tell you why.

Because now it’s all I can see. May standing on the air, waiting for me to take her hand and pull her back onto the tracks. Crawl with her back to land. And go home together.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear Kurt,