Heaven...

Sometimes I forget what this song is really about.  Love, right?  Well, most of the time I sort of felt like it was an existential statement.  Heaven, are you really out there?  Is there really a chance that things are going to get better?  Maybe that's why David loved this song so much.  This was the design I made that is based on my idea of a tattoo in his honor.
I will never forget the first time he played me this song, in his little black civic, driving through the country to Wagon train, shaking his fist in the air when Jeremy goes up an octave.
I miss you, David.

Heaven - The Fire Theft

I know it's been awhile, but...

two years and a thousand miles

Civic

 for David

The engine hasn’t turned over

since you stepped out.

Alone in the church parking lot,

I wander around its dark figure,  

admire your spray-paint stenciling

of Martin Luther King Jr.,

his left hand waving goodbye

beneath orange clouds of rust,

and the Banksy Balloon Girl,

carried away by white balloons,

each filled with a letter of FREEDOM;

she will meet with you soon.

Behind the dirty back windshield

there is a single, cake-flecked fork,

and an incomplete box of birthday candles,

twisted thin, melting in the morning sun. 

- Zack Strait

the memory of hands

*story*

It was past three in the morning.  The lights in the hospital were still blazing in the cold black wintry night, everything else bathed only in the soft orange of fluorescent street lights.  I was shivering even though I was sitting in my car.  You would think I would have the window up, but I did that sometimes, rolled the window all the way down and blasted the heater.  Hot on one side, cold on the other.  I liked the clash of temperatures on my skin.  My tears would turn into icy drops of water on my cheeks, like I was standing in a rainstorm.  I would let them roll down my skin and drip from my chin and my nose until my skin felt strange.

I had waited until I knew everyone was gone or asleep.  I couldn't be sure that I would go undetected, but I had made friends with the nurses, told them my side, and they had unanimously agreed not to bar me from the room if I did manage to make it past the waiting room without being seen.

I tossed the remainder of my cigarette onto the thick layer of ice that coated the parking lot and took a long, shaking breath.  Some part of me knew this was the last time I would be here, the last time I would dare to creep into this place at night, and I had to make it count.

I crawled out of my car, rolling the window up quickly and trying not to slip on the sheets of ice.  I was wearing tennis shoes with no traction and had already fallen several times over the last few horrifying days.  Part of me wanted to go running, sliding, careening into the blackness, feel the sharp pain of the crash, the broken bones, the tearing skin.  Blood.  I needed to feel.  Instead, all I could dredge up inside my chest was a rippling ache of fear, dulled by overwhelming exhaustion and loneliness.  I imagined all the possibilities as I hunched my shoulders and trekked across the dark parking lot.  I could almost see the looks on his sisters' faces, the glare from Dan, the sorrow in Karen.  But I had to do this, even if they were lurking somewhere in the corners of the third floor.

My body was running on the last bits of energy I could muster.  I hadn't been sleeping, but I had definitely been drinking.  A lot.  More than usual.  I could hear his voice in my head, a prophet speaking the summer before, "You know, you're becoming an alcoholic."  And my retort now was, "So what?  What are you going to do about it?  You're in a fucking hospital bed."

I felt a strange rush of anger and panic.  What if they really did stop me?  What if they found out that I had been here?  I wanted to take my fist and crush it against the nearest car window, and I stopped, contemplating this idea, like it was really a feasible option.  As I stared at the window, tinted black and ridiculously reflective, I could see my face.  Pale white in the light from the hospital windows with dark, blue shadows like bruises beneath both of my eyes.  My mouth was in a tight long line, like I was holding in my breath, and as my head began to swim, I realized that I was holding my breath.  My heart beat slowly, but each beat was like the kick of a peddle on a bass drum.  Thunk.  Thunk.  I could almost hear the beat in my ears.

I began moving again.  My feet had begun going numb, but I hadn't noticed until I nearly slipped without moving.  I hunched my shoulders against a brutal blast of cold air and ducked my head, unintentional tears spilling out from beneath my lashes, freezing onto my cheeks.  As the automatic doors slid open, I wiped my eyes roughly, feeling my cheeks burn beneath my fingers.  I looked terrible, but I would not let anyone see me cry.  That was my limit.

My knees were knocking against each other as I stood in the elevator.  I felt like my insides were quaking involuntarily from the lack of sleep and the burning alcohol in my veins.  That was something I hadn't thought about until that moment.  Would the nurses know I had been drinking?  But then, I wondered, would they care?  Didn't they understand?
When the elevator doors finally slid open, I hesitated.  The last people in the world that I wanted to see might be just down the hall.  I had planned and schemed a way around seeing them, but now that plan seemed to have flown out of my head.  I took a deep breath and stepped out into the hall before the doors closed, my heart hammering, and looked up and down the hall.

The waiting room was just down the hall from where the elevators opened, and I crept toward it, having studied its blind spots.  I knew his father had taken to sleeping in a sleeping bag in the waiting room.  He had been there for days.  When I pressed myself against the wall just beyond the windows into the room, I craned my neck carefully and looked inside.  The room was completely and totally empty.  No playing cards, no board games, and no overnighters.  Nobody.  My heart was hammering even harder.  Had something happened?

I felt my hands shaking as I stuffed them into my pockets, and I was wishing that I had a flask hidden in my coat somewhere, but I just reminded myself why I was there in the dead of night, and I turned and began walking to the end of the hallway.

He had a corner room, and I imagined it having big bay windows that looked out over the empty southern side of town.  I had tried to figure out which room was his from the parking lot, but I had never been quite sure which windows were his, and part of me didn't want to know.  Staring up at them only made me feel more alone, being outside and looking in instead of beside his bed.  As I approached the room, I could see that the door was cracked and the lights were off.  No sound came from the room except for soft beeps from the machines surrounding the bed.  I had never seen inside the room, and I had no idea what to expect when I gently pushed the door open.  I was half hoping someone would see me coming and realize that they never should have barred me in the first place.  But the room was dark and void of family and friends.  Nearly every available inch had been taken up by his long, broad shouldered body.  My chest burned, and new tears began to well in the corners of my eyes, but I sucked in a shaking breath and took two quaking steps toward the bed.

IV's and tubes encircled his face in a halo of white.  His skin looked almost translucent in the dim hallway lights, and despite the tubes in his nose and mouth, he looked peaceful, like he might only be asleep.  The half-dead part of me thought for a moment that I might wake him up if I touched his hand, but when I reached down, hands shaking so badly that I could barely control them, and took his hand in my own, his grip was slack, and his skin was cool.  Such soft hands for a boy, I thought, feeling the skin in my own rough fingers.  And in that moment, the howling desperate fear seemed to rise in me like a monster, and I had to choke back a gut-wrenching sob.

I gripped his hand like he was saving me from drowning, and I bent my head over our entwined fingers and felt the tears drop from my eyes onto skin, cold, dripping down onto the floor.  My shoulders were shaking, and I whispered, "Please, please don't die."  I couldn't think of anything else to say.  I felt rooted to the spot; I couldn't move.  I couldn't let go, because I believed for one moment that if I did he would go; he would be gone.

I didn't feel time passing me.  I didn't hear the sounds around me.  I didn't move.  I just told him everything silently with my eyes, my gaze frozen on his face.  Silence.

He found me standing there, transfixed by the darkness of the room and the light of skin and tubes.  His father, wearing a flannel shirt and sporting new bags under his eyes and lines on his face.  He touched my shoulder, and I flinched like he had burned me.  He whispered, even though his son couldn't hear anything, "Come on."

I followed without a fight.  The shreds of energy that had propelled me into his room had crumbled into dust.  I couldn't even find the strength to care if I was torn to shreds by his father.  But he didn't rip me apart.  He put a hand on my back and guided me into the hallway, passing some energy from himself to me.  I could feel the walls around my tears crumbling again, but I held my breath.

"I'm sorry," I whispered, my voice cracking and combining with a sob toward the end.  He didn't say anything.  He just nodded.

"Don't tell them," I continued, my voice shaking with tears and pain, "please, don't tell them I was here." He knew who I meant.  Don't tell his brother; don't tell his sisters; don't, oh please don't tell his friends.  I stumbled on.  I wouldn't let him send me away.  I would choose when I left, because I knew this would be the last time I would be here, and I wanted it to count.

"And don't ever tell him I was here, or that I brought you coffee, or that I made you food, or anything..."  I was shaking so hard that I thought I might fall over.

"Okay," he whispered.  The look on his face made me feel some kind of satisfaction.  Even though he knew why I was asking, he didn't like it, and he would do it under protest, even if he agreed.  But he had agreed.  And no one would ever know.

I wanted to put my arms around his neck and hug him until the pain was gone.  How many times had I hugged him that way?  But instead of moving toward him, I took a step back, never looking into his face.

"I'll...see you later," I whispered, my heart hurting so much that I glanced down at my chest just to be sure there wasn't a knife protruding from it.

My escape was a blur of lights and walls, smudged together by my tears, tears I wouldn't allow to fall until I had finally made it into the parking lot.  And as soon as that blast of frozen air smashed into my face, I ran.  I ran and ran to my car, slid inside as fast as I could, and sped away from that place as quickly as possible, into the dark, black nothingness around me.

*the end*

David died 2 weeks after this happened unexpectedly during a routine procedure from a blood clot on February 8, 2010.

my room overlooks the world, an ocean in a raging storm

now I'm caught drifting through this world alone

I have no home.

the memory of hands, held together warm and gentle,

I try to forget and fail.

The sky is dark, clouds are forming, rain is pouring,

I know you'd be dancing.

Remember the night when you turned and looked,

You smiled to me and then you were gone.

I can't stop feeling those final moments,

God forgive me.  I can't let them go.

And I cry, but I don't let it show.