we wrote a prelude to our own fairy tale
and bought a parachute at a church rummage sale
As we sat in the glow of the Brisbane River at the end of that year of years, watching city lights with swaying gazes—you told us you were seeing someone. Like romantically? Someone you'd met at Woodford, you said. Again I became aware of that faintest hope, before I crushed it once more.
New Year's Eve passed in drunk photos and laughter, us huddled in a pile on the couch—all details I was content to let float under the bridge. We downed fireball shots as the booming of fireworks declared the birth of 2021.
Still, you kept driving me from South Brisbane to Toowong and back again, sometimes later because of traffic or because I had to duck out for lunch. Before I knew it, you were my best friend in Brisbane, the one I always went to because you were the only one who would say yes. And your car had become an island of safety into which I could retreat from the weight of the day, where talking was suddenly effortless.
In May, we met to trade a soldering iron for a clothes iron—a detail we both chuckled over. In the shade of shifting leaves in that house on Turquoise Street, you witnessed me mark my jacket with an orca patch, while I handed you my tools. And I thought how easy, how comfortable it was, driving to Bunnings afterwards to pick up household materials. I wanted to do this again and again, drift through aisles on disparate yet common tasks, like we were...
Don’t do it, I told myself. Don’t do it, you’ll be hurt again.
For the whole car ride back to the Emporium, we made small talk about brushes and dustpans and the roadside sights. I leapt out as fast as I could. But at the five-way crossing, I continued to dwell on you, how you were one of the kindest people I had ever known, and so easy to adore if I let myself.
There would be no D&D that Friday, so I could spend the next week burying the thought of you with the thought of everything else. I didn't want this, wasn't over my grief, didn't want you pulled into my whirlpool of anxieties, didn't want the heartache, the rejection.
So I said no, and left that hope unanswered, interred in the ground.