Segment 6

         belovedgatheredwearedearlytodayhere
         And I’m buffeted.
         theuninocelebratejoiningthisof
         And battered.
         nowmanpronounceandwifeyou
         Even
         may
         as I
         kiss
         break
         the
         through.
         I’m spitting glass I can’t taste, there’s a pain cutting up my insides and I’m laid out, stretching to escape the shards, frayed wires where knots of muscle used to be. There’s a shockwave waiting for me in the future, a curved wave that’s going to hit like a hammer. I’m carrying the echo of it with me, effect before cause, running to reach the place where I started. Where I left you behind.
         “Did it start raining yet?” you ask and for a piercing second I think you’re talking to me.
         “A little while ago,” another voice responds. It’s hard to hear you, I’m surrounded by other noise, cloistered in a cloying dark, deposited in the center of a floor, tables at the height of my head. A rhythm moves against the grain of my motion and somewhere not too distant people are trying to catch it and ride it and see if it might take them someplace else, for a little while. “Someone went out for a cigarette and said it had started.”
         “Bad?” maybe you say. Another voice comes out of the murk, entices people to move a certain way and a desperate mass complies. There’s a stink of hope in the air. Coiled laughter and the clink of glasses.
         A rustle. A shrug I can’t see. There’s a flash of white that goes on and on. Lights whirl in opposing colors. “A drizzle, they said. Nothing serious.”
         “Well, at least it held off this long,” you say. I can’t see your face, but the rest of you is clear. Your legs are sheathed in a dress that screams special occassion. Recognition comes slowly to me, the pressure of years is relentless, monotonous, I’m compressed into an endless moment, it looks the same no matter where you stare, the kind of quicksand you don’t realize you’re sinking into until it floods your nose and all you can breathe is discarded silt.
         The other woman waves a dismissive hand. Even haloed in haze, I recognize her. I know her. She’s cloaked in white. “As long as it held off until the ceremony was over, I don’t care.” She barks out a laugh that is nearly swallowed by the ambience. “After that, we can build an ark to get home, for all it matters.”
         You cast a glance around. “You may have to, if you want some of the people to get home without going off the road.” Making a face, you sip at some drink that you’re holding, that light is refracting through and curling space itself. There’s time. Time in every inch. People celebrate right over my presence, engaging in animated affairs, and I think I know why. Thunder holds it breath somewhere above me.
         She points. “Like you should talk there, honey.” Yes. It’s her. The rough, friendly quality to her voice I could never mistake. “I don’t think that’s exactly ginger ale now, is it?”
         You smile impishly and swirl the liquid inside the glass. “As far as you’re concerned, it is.” The notlight cushions you, there’s a delicate quality to your outline, like any second you might fade out, slip out of phase and go to some place that’s beyond even me. Putting the glass down without drinking any of it, you say, “I really can’t believe it.”
         “What, that you’re able to take advantage of an open bar? As long as Dad doesn’t figure out what it is, I think you’ll be all right.” Someone comes up and hugs her at random and is gone, fleeting afterimages caught like diamond flecks in my eye, the moment gone too fast for me to even process it. It’s film, overexposed and I’m trying to sort through a thousand layers superimposed, trying to find the one that will tell me what I need to know.
         “That’s not it,” you say quickly, grinning. You shake your head, staring at the other woman with barely concealed, as if she were the impermanent one and not yourself. Like she might vanish at any moment and you’ll remain forever behind. My fist clenches. I’ve forgotten all the wrong things. How light you were. The colors caught in your hair. The way your cheek felt against mine, when you weren’t ready for it. I can’t tear myself away from the things I most regret. “You’re married now,” you say, almost hushed against the clatter. “I can’t believe it. My sister, all gone and married.”
         “You make it sound like something other than it is,” your sister counters, tilting her head to the side. She’s so happy now, caught in the center of the day, the events focused on her, a hurricane whose winds only draw you closer. I don’t even remember who the groom was, although I’m sure I met him at some point. Your sister was a number of years older than you were and her presence at your house was always fragmentary, a wisp yet fading, there and not there. I could walk past her room and never be able to tell if it was a place that someone lived or just a room set up in case that person came back. She always seemed to arrive when I was in another room entirely and the thing I most remember is her voice, carrying through the walls and the floors, borne on sharpened air. Even in the gazy sound enveloping this hall, blasting from distant speakers, everything she says bleeds right through.
         “Do I? It can mean more than one thing, you know?” you answer, using the glass to punctuate your statement. “You’re married now, and that’s, it’s a big thing.” You nod to yourself, as if you have said something sage.
         Your sister narrows her eyes. “How much of that have you drank, exactly?” There’s amusement but it’s bracketed by an aura of concern. It didn’t take much to set off the alarm bells in your family.
         “It never takes much,” you tell her, with the air of a seasoned veteran. I’m not sure how much of it is bluff, trying to make yourself older than you are. The fabric of the gathering is reflected in your eyes, a lingering question. How many times can they all clump together like this? I know of one. I can think of one more time, when the moment allows. “Not for me.” A smirk rumbles on your face. “Lucky me, though. Makes me a cheap date.”
         “More ways than one perhaps,” she says, with a laugh.
         “Hey,” you protest, with delayed reaction. The air is thick with the heat of people, it swamps the room and traps all sound. Your mouth is curled with the effort of forming words. I can’t explain my vantage. I’m high enough to see the table, with its discarded napkins and half empty glasses and wrinkled tablecloth, but I can’t discern anyone else. Perhaps I’m stuck in your memory, and everything else is blurred. “I don’t think that’s what I meant.”
         “Are you even sure?” your sister responds, needling. I think I catch the way space bends around your parents, somewhere across the room. We all have a certain gravity and some orbits grow tighter than others. More distinctive, perhaps. I’ve always known the smell of loss, from the moment I walked into my house and found out how bad a day can get. I just never knew how to describe it, until I burst the barrier and fell through. Fell out. There’s a floor under me but I don’t know how it’s holding me up. I keep expecting to be rescued but I can’t see where the danger is. “Do you even know what you’re saying?”
         “‘Course I do,” you say firmly, putting one hand flat on the table, palm down. You squint, as if trying to see your sister from another angle and say again, “You’re married now.”
         “I’m pretty sure we went over that already. But I’m glad you’re able to retain something. Maybe I’ll have Mom quiz you tomorrow morning to see how well you did.”
         “No, come on, seriously,” you say, giggling. “I mean it. This is, it’s a big change now. It’s all different. Everything. It’s just . . . not the same.”
         Her eyes grow wide. “Oh my God, you’re right. It is all different.” She looks around with mock concern. “Quick, maybe it’s not too late to undo it all.”
         “You’re making fun of me,” you say, resting your chin on your hand, almost glumly.
         “Well, that hasn’t changed,” your sister notes. “And it probably never will, either.” She reaches over and pats you on the hand. “Come on, enjoy yourself. You might as well.” She snorts and laughs again, looking around. “Hell, we all should, before the bill for all of this comes in.”
         “And then what?” you ask, somewhat cautiously.
         “I go on my honeymoon, if all goes well,” she says, lightly. Under her breath, I hear her mutter, “And he better have remembered to book the tickets, like I asked him to . . .”
         “And when you come back?”
         “Christ, girl, what is this? Twenty questions? I got married, I didn’t kill anyone, there’s no reason for the interrogation, hm?” She stares at you with one narrowed eye, probably already seeing what I suspect is lurking and lingering. She always knew you better than anyone, it’s the dissonance of the dance that’s stalled her so far from realizing it. “Just where are you going with this anyway?”
         I pass by an inch from you, close enough to see how the light catches the links in your necklace, dewdrops suspended, caught somewhere in the dark. Something makes you stand up suddenly, the chair scraping backwards. I’m distantly aware of it embedded in my stomach and a person standing behind me sticking their wineglass somewhere inside my head. I know my hands are there, but I can’t see them. I know I’m overlapping but I can’t describe how it feels. You’re standing right near me, swaying slightly. Out on the floor the tempo has shifted, moving to a slower thudding and people are drifting toward it in pairs. I hear it, but I’m drawn to a different place.
         “Where am I going?” you ask, restating it into something rhetorical. “I, well, I’m . . .” you tilt your head to the side slightly in a way that I always found endearing. “I don’t know.” You start to slide back. “That’s a good question.”
         Your sister is there, moving as fast as a wedding dress will allow, catching you by the elbow. A breeze rustles me and I stagger back, pelted by the inverted echo of my name from some place inside. All sound cuts out for a second, I can’t process what I’m hearing, all sound becomes foreign.
         Time lurches, jumps. She’s leading you away on shaky legs, your dress seeming to shimmer as you move. The sheerness of it accents how thin you are. Was it this bad already? I can’t piece the sequence.
         “-get some air?” your sister is asking, when the gears start running again. I’m right behind you, without remembering how I got there. Maybe I went elsewhere and came back. I’ve been forward and I’ve seen how this ends. Was your sister still married, by the time it came crashing down, or was it already a fond dream, too soon disintegrated. Was this the last time everyone gathered together in memory, in one place, for a single purpose, without rancor, without discord. There’s a demarcation buried in here somewhere, the sense that each time we come together, we depart farther away. But the more I try to stay away, the more I find myself coming back.
         “We can’t, where are we-“ you sputter, not really resisting but utterly confused. The area where you were sitting has thinned out considerably, people travelling to other parts of the hall, onto the dance floor, holding each other close in a blanket of music. I can’t hear it properly, I couldn’t even tell you the song. And yet it binds nonetheless. “This is your wedding, you can’t leave. We can’t go.” There’s a casual panic in your eyes, the sense that events are proceeding the way that they should be.
         But your sister has a smile hidden in her face. Even from my oblique angle I can see it. “Hush, we’re not leaving, we’re just going to take a bit of fresh air, clear our heads a bit.”
         “But people are going to wonder-“
         ”They’re not going to wonder anything,” she admonishes. The two of you have almost reached the entrance to the hall. Light spills in from outside, the curvature of the lobby visible just beyond the frame. There’s the shadow of the arc of stairs, spiralling forever upward. “Come on now, the day isn’t about me at all. It’s about an excuse for everyone to enjoy an open bar for a little while. We were just the motor that got it all started.” She stops at the entrance and looks back on the assembled crowd, all deep into the festivities. Someone looks toward you and waves but their face fades too quickly to register. The heat of this room feels all too familiar. I think I’ll shoot someone in a place like this, someday, for reasons that will seem amusing later. “Yeah,” she adds, finally, “we could leave now for the honeymoon and momentum alone would carry this thing through.”
         You’re leaning up against the doorframe, half in and half out. Your face seems strangely washed out in the nearlight. “I got you a nice gift,” you say, barely there. Your eyes flutter closed and then snap open. “Did I tell you yet? What I got you?”
         She looks at you and is trying not to laugh. “You already did, yeah.” There’s dust flitting about that settles on the air like glitter. “Before we got here, you told me.”
         Her face scrunches up into a frown. “I wasn’t supposed to tell you.”
         “Don’t worry, I was still surprised,” she tells you gently. “And it was very nice, regardless.”
         “That’s good,” you say, sounding tired. Something ripples across your face then, the skin of another time superimposed briefly over your features and you say in a too calm voice, “I think I’m ready for that air now.”
         “That sounds like a good idea,” your sister agrees. “I’m debating whether to have one last cigarette. I promised him I’d give them up once we got married . . . I’m debating whether tonight is considered a grace period, though.” She appears to consider it for a second and then shrugs. “The hell with it,” she laughs, “I can always apologize later.”
         “If you set the dress on fire, I’m not sure I can help you,” you point out, grinning lopsidedly. Your eyes are drifting out toward the dance floor, and the people wrapped in light and shadows. Somewhere a strobe light is playing out over their bodies, but nobody is recognizable. It’s a house full of strangers, like a planet where nobody remembers your name. I’ve been there, to that place, in the deep future where all your descendants are nothing but fragments strewn on tattered paper, segments of a syllable of a language that nobody remembers how to use. There’s people out there, but we’re all aliens to them, and they to us. I can’t close the disconnect. I can’t understand that you’re not alive at some point, even with the evidence, even with the cold logic that time provides.
         “I think it was designed with morons like me in mind,” she responds, grinning broadly. Observing the place to where your gaze is directed, she pauses and watches you for a second. “Checking up on your date?” she says finally.
         “I don’t see him,” you say, squinting.
         Drifting, I stop. Something in your voice makes me. I’ve put my arm through the wall and there’s wood leaking into my veins. My veins aren’t there. Time’s coating the air, bringing it all down into decay. You’re staring into the crowd and I think you’re staring at me. But that can’t right. Because I’m next to you. Because I’m not here.
         “Oh, he’s in there somewhere, I’m sure,” your sister tells you.
         “I’m not sure,” you say, strangely sober. There’s a glimpse of something reflected in your eyes. A part of you that I didn’t realize was holding its breath relaxes. “Do you think he’s all right?”
         “Everyone’s all right tonight,” she replies, but her face is serious. Are they talking about me? Was I the date? I can’t tell what perspective I’m remembering this from. Am I recalling the wedding because I’m here now, as a figment, travelling down into memory. Am I infected by you, by the way it all unfolded? I can’t tell. I can’t say. Am I here? Where?
         “Don’t give me that crap,” you say with a muffled forcefulness. The scene jumps and shifts, a reel losing its bearing. You’ve closed your eyes again, and are resting your head against the doorframe, staring up at a ceiling you can’t see.
         Your sister is watching you again, her expression veiled. “You still care about him, don’t you?” There’s a neutral zone in her voice and I can’t tell who they’re talking about. Me? So guardedly? Was I even here.
         “I can’t help it,” you say. It’s hard to tell if that’s a good thing or not. “You didn’t see him, the day it happened. He could barely move, I didn’t know what to do.”
         “He’s moving all right now.” Your sister is staring out into someplace past me. I can’t guess my vantage, I don’t know how I’m interpreting. “If that’s really him.”
         “In suits, they all look the same,” you answer somewhat wistfully. “And I just hope he’s enjoying himself. After all he’s been through, I think he deserves it.”
         Are you talking about some other boyfriend, who had been in a car accident. There were always rumors of men on the side. No, that’s not right. I’m sinking into the firmament, into a quicksand of collective recall. But I’m not blending, not falling into solution. Given enough time, I’ll just bleed right through. Into whatever holds the memory, into whatever lies on the other side.
         “For what it’s worth, I always thought the two of you were cute together.” It can’t be me. Your sister never called me cute. Other names, maybe but never cute. But time mellows. And it sours. “I’m glad you brought him. We don’t see enough of him anymore.”
         “I almost didn’t.” You open your eyes and stare into some place that isn’t a place. “I thought about asking him and I thought about him just sitting at the table crying into his drink or not talking to anybody and . . . I didn’t want to do that to him. I didn’t want people to see him that way.”
         “He seems fine, though.”
         “He does. He does,” you say, frowning slightly. “In the end, I just asked him, and let him decide what he wanted to do. Part of me didn’t know what I was going to do if he said yes. And when he did I still didn’t know. For a second, I thought he might have done it just to spite me.” You rubbed at your face with a tired hand. “But I just wasn’t thinking straight. And sometimes I don’t know why I do the things that I do.” For another few seconds you stare outwards. It’s possible I get a flash of myself. Was I ever really here? There’s photos, strewn somewhere with proof. Sighing, you release yourself from the wall. “Come on,” you say, “I could use that air about now. We might as well go.”
         I’m swept, carried. If there was nothing to attach myself to, would I just break apart and drift away, mist caught in a breeze, too fragile to hold itself together. Other days flicker at the edge of my vision, I find myself constantly looking for doors that lead to a way out but the only escape is a direction I can’t fathom. So I follow you, without will or understanding. You and your sister. Behind us, the reception gives one last spasm of sound before the door slams on it and cuts it off completely. The two of you walk in silence, heels clacking on the polished floor. Twins stairs spiral upwards, mirroring each other. I think I hear my own voice, for a second, a fragment that evaded a dying world. You’re heading for the doors, for the world outside.
         Someone at a desk near the entrance smiles and nods at you, as if a bride walking out of her own wedding reception was a common occurance. Maybe it is, in this place, in this time. Nobody stayed together anymore, where we came from. Nobody I knew. It was all tentative connections, pairings that only lasted as long as the convenience did. Things changed, poles shifted and breaches were formed, bonds too easily broken apart. But maybe that’s just me, my perspective. If you take things out far enough, everyone is alone eventually, where it counts.
         Glass passes through my face, I feel the ripples of a cool breeze without actually feeling it. You and your sister are still ahead, standing at the entrance. The place is covered in lights, the walkway lined with them, making the whole scene unreal, a step into some kind of fantasy land where a carriage might pass by, laden with jewels, where a king might stop in just to bestow his blessing. The stars are out but I don’t recognize any of them, it’s just holes punched in the blackness, revealing the fire that lies behind it all, that sits waiting to consume. I feel cold, beset by an inevitable doom. I’m watching you grow old, marching to your death. Out of sequence, I’m watching you die. In this land of magic, in this lush stillness, this could be the last quiet moment you ever have. That’s a lie. But in this segment it’s all I have, it’s all I have to go on.
         Then your sister takes out a cigarette and shatters the image.
         She doesn’t actually light it, just holds it between two fingers, one on each end, regarding the object like some kind of dead worm, with a child’s fascination for things that weren’t clean and pretty. I don’t know where she got it from. Maybe you gave it to her.
         “I’m not going to light this, you know,” she says, holding it up to eyelevel and staring at it intently, trying to will it to disappear. Or catch on fire.
         You’re standing a few feet away, arms crossed over your chest. “I was hoping you wouldn’t, to be honest,” you say, sounding a little more sober than before. You cough a little, as if to emphasize. I’m near you now and I can see your skin is shivering. The night seems clear and warm but I can’t tell, I can’t feel. Nobody’s breath manifests in the air, but that means nothing.
         She casts a glance back toward you. “But you still came out anyway, hm?”
         You greet that with a cocky smile. “Sometimes I like to live dangerously.”
         She sighs, still holding the cigarette. “I came out here with the intent of lighting it. I really did. I saved this one, I figured I’d have one last one before I gave them up completely.” Suddenly she casts the thing to the ground, letting it land somewhere out on the pavement, where it rolls helplessly away into the night, away from the ethereal lamps. At some point I imagine a car will roll over it and that will be that. “But it hardly seems to matter, it feels more like an obligation than anything else. I can’t be bothered to do it simply for the sake of doing it. On top of everything else, it just doesn’t seem important.”
         “That’s nice,” you say, yawning, distracted. You’ve lingered near the doors still, and the light shining out from the building throws you into silhoutte, your shadow pinned down by multiple light sources, a stretched, bulbous thing. At a certain angle it might even seem to have depth, draining parts of you into itself.
         She turns to you then, hands on hips, staring at you with mock irritation. “Oh, am I boring you? I’m terribly sorry.”
         For a moment you don’t seem to take it as joking. “Sorry, I’m, really, I didn’t mean . . .” you blink, standing up military straight and bumping backwards a little into the door. Your weight fails to open it. “I’m just not all here tonight, I’m . . .”
         “Calm down, easy,” she says. There must be a highway nearby, because a car revs and speeds away into whatever oblivion Doppler waves climb into. “I’m just kidding with you.” You’re shivering again, hands over your bare shoulders. You look frozen. You look beautiful in a vulnerable way, trying to get away from something you can’t see. It’s right behind you, it’s all around. When you don’t respond immediately, your sister asks, “Are you all right? Is everything-“
         ”I’m fine,” you say, quickly, sharply. The cigarette is still rolling somewhere, captured by the night’s breezes, maybe travelling out to the highway, to the open road. I’m with it, as the traffic light changes. There are cars pointed in a certain direction, going to places we can’t see. “I’m all right, I’m fine.” You wouldn’t convince me, if I were here. “Everything is just fine.”
         “No, it’s not,” she says, with the definitive tone of family. They knew you better than anyone else, maybe even yourself. All eyes were always on you, we were all holding our breath waiting for you to stumble, always bracing ourselves for your fall. At least I was, at the end. In the beginning I wasn’t, but they infected me, and maybe that’s why it happened the way it did. “Don’t try to tell me that so we’ll go back inside and forget all about this.”
         “This? You don’t even know what this is,” you snap, staring down at your shadow, at all your shadows, superimposed on each other. “There is no this here, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
         The edge of her lip twitches. “And you can’t drive me back inside by pissing me off either, sis. I’m in too good a mood for that today.”
         “Lucky me,” you breathe.
         “What’s the deal, girl?” she asks bluntly. “What’s eating at you? Was your boy in there misbehaving Because one word to Dad and-“
         ”That’s not it,” you answer. “No, that’s not it.”
         “You know, if you keep making me guess, you’re probably not going to like some of my guesses,” she says warningly, tapping one immaculately shod foot.
         You look at her, your expression guarded. In front of the glass door, the sections of it cut into squares, you seem so small, lost in the pattern of the world. “You should stop guessing, then,” you tell her, without any force.
         “Then you should start telling me,” she replies immediately. “Because I’ll ask for audience participation, if I have to.”
         “You’re not going to let this go, are you?” you say, your words shaded by anger. You’re trembling now, I’m close enough to tell, but it’s from worse than a chill now, it’s brought on by something internal. You muffle a cough, to force yourself to stop talking.
         “Not today, hon,” she says, her smile cruel to anyone but family. She smiled that way at me, once, and I never thought I’d get out alive. “Today’s the day I get everything I want, for once.”
         You shoot her a glare but refuse to speak.
         Her smile becomes thin, comprised of ice. “All right, who should I grab first for our game? You just wait right here . . .” she goes to move, a step toward the door.
         “Dammit, all right. All right!” You swear under your breath, brushing invisible moths away from your face. “If you want to, dammit . . .” your sister backs away a step, not expecting this reaction, but otherwise she holds her ground. Someplace beyond, the highway hums, carrying people away. The cigarette is probably already flat, spilling its contents on the uncaring road.
         “I’m happy for you,” you say, almost spitting the words out, somehow conveying sincerity. “I really am, I want you to know that. Probably more than anyone else here today, even more than Mom and Dad. I want to see you happy, and you are happy and dammit, that’s . . . that’s all I ever wanted for you.” The words take a lot out of you, when you finally pause you seem somewhat thinner.
         “I know that,” she says, quietly. “I never doubted that, for a second.” She almost takes a step, hesitates, stops. “But what’s in the way? What’s this thing that’s bothering you?”
         You sigh, run a hand through your hair, smile at her almost shyly. “I didn’t want to tell you this but . . .” you sigh again, shake your head and let your arm drop. “Dammit,” you whisper, seeing something none of the rest of us can, in the depths of your converging shadows. “These things, stuff like this, like tonight they . . . it messes with my head. It messes with me.”
         Of all the answers you might have given, this appears to be the one your sister least expects. She’s staring at you, apparently running the words over and over in her mind, trying to figure out if she heard what she thinks she heard. You’re looking at her but not directly at her, part of your stare daring her to tell you otherwise, that you don’t feel the way you do. Detached, I think I know where you’re going with this. At the time, I never would have known. Perhaps I’m inside now, not even wondering where you are, what you might be thinking, like the right bastard I am. People tell me that and I could never believe it, until the evidence was there. I’m walking through barbed curtains of my sins, leaving bits of myself behind, to wither on the spines. It’s not about me. But I’m the one trapped in your life.
         “I don’t understand,” is all she says and it’s a stalling tactic. I don’t know what she really wants to say, but it’s not what came out.
         You bite your lip and look away, tucking yourself into that neat corner where the wall meets the door. Seen sideways, it’s like you’re sitting on a ledge and leaning over. “I didn’t want to say that. I didn’t want to get into it. I was hoping you wouldn’t ask.”
         “Well, I did,” your sister says, simply. “And you said it. So, now what?” She seems to have regained something of herself. “What did you mean by it? What’s messing with you?”
         “This,” you exhale, waving your hand distractedly, back toward the building, the party, to all the places beyond. Your fingers nearly brush up against my face. In a place I don’t have anymore, I rememeber how it felt, briefly, to know your fingertips. It’s pathetic, the things I know, even after all this time. When there’s no time at all. “All of it, it’s . . .” your arm drops, slaps against your leg, a blow against a thing you can’t touch. “You don’t think about it,” you say. “Most of the time, it’s in the back of my head and it’s not there and then . . .” your fingers interlace, one shoe clacks into the other, you refuse to look up, to see what might be there. “Weddings are the worst,” you say, almost inaudible, your hair covering every part of what could be an expression. “Because I’m in the middle of it and I’m enjoying it and just . . . just out of nowhere, this feeling comes, this damn realization that . . .” your hand brushes against your hair and for a second I see how pale you are. How pale you always have been. “I want one of these.” Your lips barely part. “Not now, but one day. And I don’t know when one day will come. If I’ll make it that far.”
         “Don’t talk like that,” your sister snaps suddenly, with a piercing burst of anger. “Goddamnit, don’t even start to talk like that. You start dwelling on that crap, you’re just going to make yourself sick-“
         ”You think I can stay positive every damn day?” you retort, your body arching like a whip about to be cracked. “You think that’s easy?” You sag back a bit, trying not to drain yourself. “And you know, it’s . . . most of the time I can, I think I’m a pretty happy person, all things considered, I think . . . I do all right. I don’t cry myself to sleep at night, I don’t sit in my room cutting myself when nobody is around.” You pause. “I do all right,” you say again. “But I can’t . . . not all the time. I can’t be all smiles all the time when . . .”
         “Nobody expects you to be,” she says quickly, as if she’s trying to derail the conversation before it goes into places she can’t handle. For the first time I think I see her honestly uncomfortable, a glimpse into a future she doesn’t need my help to see. Did she think about this moment, as you ebbed away? Did it come back to her finally and make the moment that much worse? All the things you’d never do. That’s what comes to you the most, when seconds are just slivers. “Nobody wants that, it’s, that’s too much pressure.” To be having this conversation, outside a wedding, in this dress, at this place, it’s too surreal. I might be inside, never knowing about this. “We just want you to be . . .”
         “I know what you want . . .” you say, almost pleading. “I know that. I know what all of you want for me. And I love you all for it, but . . . there are things I want that I . . . I might never have and . . .” you move toward the door, maybe to open it, maybe to slip away. In the end you go nowhere at all. It’s just gestures, in the dark. “Days like this, things like tonight, they just remind me of that . . . sometimes.” You’re still not looking at her. She might be moving. I’m staring at you and you I’m somewhere else, dancing, acting like an idiot. Maybe I’ll cut myself on something tonight and wish I healed faster. I get my wishes. Maybe I took yours. It’s not right, it could never be. But it’s the way it is. “That’s all. That’s all it is. Nothing more than that. Just being stupid.”
         She hugs you suddenly, catching you in such an embrace that you almost disappear. Her dress envelops you and you’re cushioned in billowy white for what feels like a much longer time. Her arms are wrapped around you, like she’s trying to prevent whatever’s inside of you from escaping, or to squeeze whatever is tearing you down out of your skin. You don’t say a word and I catch a glimpse of your face, your expression still, your eyes closed. You’re not crying. I don’t expect you to.
         “You’re going to outlive me,” she says quietly. “Don’t ever think otherwise.”
         Your smile is thin and fond. “I certainly will if you don’t quit smoking.”
         You pull away, or she lets you go. It’s not clear which is true.
         “I didn’t mean to do this,” you say, fumbling with words, the edges slightly slurred. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t . . . this is your wedding day and I just, I didn’t mean to dump it all on you, I-“
         ”I know,” she says softly. “And it’s all right.” Something at the end of her voice echoes, I’m hearing things from far away. The cars nearby, barreling down to parts I’ll never reach, sound trapped in a closed, curved tunnel. There’s air whistling through everything. That’s what makes us alive.
         You’re rubbing at your face. “I swear I’ll go back to being happy now. Really.” You flash her a quick smile. “At least until my wedding, right? I’m allowed to cry there, I think.”
         “You certainly are,” your sister says, with a laugh. She puts a hand on your shoulder, guides you toward the door. “Come on, we better rejoin the party before they forget why they’re in there and really start wrecking the place.” You slip away from her grasp, somehow, at the last second, letting her open the door. I’m not following you. There’s warm lights inside, beckoning. And out here it’s crystal, it’s so still. The night’s too clear. You see too much out in times like this, you see things as they really are. You caught a glimpse at how it was going to go, how it had to be. “I’m sure it’s still a race to see who taps out the open bar first . . .”
         The two of you, descending into a hallway of painted light. You stop, just for a second, at the door and look out. Not toward me. That’s just illusion. I hold out a hand I can’t see, maybe I’ll cause a flicker you can feel. Just for a second. A breeze tipped on nothing. You’re staring out into the sky, maybe. What’s on your face, I can’t read. It’s tainted by the light, by what’s going on inside. They’re partying, we were, not just for your sister and her husband, but for you, for reaching another milestone, congratulating ourselves on getting you there. It’s a lie, it had nothing to do with us, but it was better than nothing. We had to feel important, we had to decide we were part of it.
         You linger only for a second, hand on the door. I’ll never know what you’re thinking. I’m too far away. But in that moment, before you turn away, I think I see you, nakedly unsure of yourself, staring out into a featureless dark and knowing only uncertainty. I think that’s what I see, laid down on your face. But sometimes we overlay what we think on top of what we see and we refuse to witness what’s truly there. But being aware of it doesn’t make it any less real, or destructive.
         Still, the moment is just that, a moment and you’re turned and gone before anything can even register. I’m moving out now, opposite of you, opposite of what might be me in there. Pole rejecting pole. And I see the two of you, growing smaller, retracting yourselves into a crystal world, until you become indistinct and start to blend together, the way light bleeds, when it has no place else to go.
         I think you’re just reentering the reception hall when a car, or a bat, or maybe the wind itself drives through me and I’m dissipated, thrown back down the hole, deeper into unknown warrens.