Lover’s Death
Dear Jay,
I can still see how your face glows in the twinkle lights. There are dark circles beneath your eyes because you would never sleep without providing me with a Christmas miracle, and you’re hopping from one foot to the other as you explain that this year is special.
It’s the tenth anniversary of when we first met. You say it as though I could forget the crooked path that led me to you, your voice trembling over the microphone as you made yourself vulnerable for the first time in your adult life. You didn’t think you had a problem, but you heard every iteration of what a man like you ought to do or the harm you were capable of, and you internalized it because nobody knew shame as well as the boy whose childhood had been stolen from him.
You were fumbling hands and kisses that tasted of red wine, as your hands gripped either side of my face and drove my hips into the blanket. Thin flannel scratched across red dirt as the skies illuminated the best and worst parts of ourselves, but I became drunk on you.
The infatuation never went away. With less than three hours of sleep, I allowed you to lead me from the bedroom to an emerald and gold tree. The holidays were my favorite, and you took joy in the knowledge that each gesture felt monumental to me. Not that you took those memories for granted either; you were a whirlwind of activity, charging decorations to your credit card to provide a feel-good moment, and never once complaining about the price. You wouldn’t even attach a number to it because you valued my presence there over the numbers in your bank account, and I learned to bask in your warmth.
You wore a navy button-down and a pair of jersey shorts because you didn’t want to fumble through the dresser drawers while I slept following a twelve-hour shift. I could never explain to you how much Christmas magic meant to me because you came from a family that didn’t believe in anything. Your needs were always ignored for a brother who struggled, and you loved him enough to forgive him for it, but you worried that nobody would stay.
You would always be an afterthought, and you had to minimize your pain to make people love you. So instead of sleeping, you strung garlands across the mantle. You snatched pictures from albums of the two of us cheek to cheek on our first road trip. We argued, but you pretended it didn’t bother you and made a picnic on the side of the road. The car spewed gravel as we attempted to leave the shoulder, but by then our petty disagreements became feather light, and we laughed as you sang karaoke to a Taylor Swift song. You vowed never to forget, which I believed, and still do as I stumble into a living room with tinsel and plaid wrapping paper.
“Dylan,” you say, a tentative smile as you gaze at me from a bent knee, “I know nothing about the past few years has been easy. But given the choice to do it again, I would choose you every time.”
The ring you present to me is the last thing I expect. We’re chaos incarnate. A vehicle broken down on the side of the road, as both of us swear that we filled the gas tank, we had the oil refilled, and neither of us noticed the check engine light that has been a backseat driver for hundreds of miles.
I never wanted to be a cliché, but my hands fly to my mouth. Of course, I do too. I would choose you every time, Jay Rathburn. A hundred lifetimes over. No amount of suffering is enough to turn me away from you, and I only wish that we had more time.
The rock glimmered in incandescent lights and, instead of bemoaning the lack of sleep, I kissed you with the same fervor you stumbled upon all those years ago, when you thought you were too broken to love and nobody worth their salt would stay. I kissed away the tears as you realized that somebody accepted you for who you were, and we tripped back to the bedroom to an eternity of waking up slow and fighting over whose turn it was to make coffee.
“Will you marry me?” you ask.
“Yes,” I tell you. “God, yes. I thought you would never ask.”
“I can’t wait to do this again every day for the rest of my life,” you whisper, and it’s music to my ears.
I can’t imagine a more glorious outcome, but spring brings roads slick with rain and impatience. It brings a world where you don’t come back to me, and for the first time in over a decade, I can’t blame you for it.
You want to be here, but I arrive at the candlelight vigil alone. They speak of how good you are, but they don’t know that you memorized the words to every Taylor Swift song that played on the radio, or that you ordered pancakes at three in the morning without blinking an eye. They’ve never held your hand across the console while you cried because you made a reservation at the wrong place or waited too long, and they canceled a getaway weekend.
Nothing either of us does will bring you back. I wear my heart on my sleeve, hoping that you’ll break it, but you can’t hold anything between your fists. They say the likelihood you remember is slim to none, and I imagine begging you to stay while you slip through my hands like grains of sand through a thin bottleneck. I want to hold onto you, but you’re moving too quickly for me to get a grasp on anything.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t bring myself to part with the ring. Even if I can’t wear it, I need the reminder of how you overcame everything to stand beside me. Love is everywhere and nowhere. Love is learning to let go of things we thought meant forever without depreciating the value.
I love you, Jay. I will always love you. And I hope that wherever you are, you feel it too.
