ancient history…. found words… encore…
almost totally fiction…
It wasn’t the first time he had been in her apartment. Had it belonged to anyone else, the college dorminess of it would have been embarrassing. The futon and the papasan chair and the 13″ TV. But to him it always…
“It’s time for my birthday present.” She held out an old guitar. It belonged to him. He had loaned it to her so she could learn. She never really did. “Sing something.”
“Something?”
“You know what.”
He took the guitar and began to tune it. “I dont have a capo, so the key…”
“Just sing,'” she said.
The first time he slept in her apartment they had barely met. It was after a work party that ran too long to drive home, and a bunch of people crashed at a bunch of apartments. He slept on a bare mattress on the floor of her room. He was close enough to reach up and shake her when she snored. He can still remember the feel of her leg through a threadbare blanket. It was already happening. It had been maybe a week and it was like he had known her forever.
“A lovestruck Romeo, sings the streets a serenade…”
The second time was maybe a month later. She lit candles and incense. They talked in the dark. To this day, he can’t remember how it happened that she went to bed. All he can remember is lying on the futon all night, listening to the wind whip a cable against a flagpole out by the beach, wondering why the hell he was out here while she was in there.
“Juliet, when we made love, you used to cry…”
Remember when you were in college, you could pile on a bed and a dorm with a bunch of friends and give each other backrubs and it didn’t really mean anything more than that? Well, that’s how it started. But they weren’t in college any more. And the only thing holding her shirt on was a sliver of indecision.
“I love you like the stars above, I’m gonna love you till I die…”
Sometimes, when he has doubts(which is often) he has to remind himself that it really happened. The reminder is the look on her face as she sat while he played. And to this day, he knows the sound of indecision as the sound of a wire on a flagpole in the wind…
“One day youre gonna realize, it was just that the time was wrong…”