We Won't Ever Be Young Again
By Pam Avoledo
We sit across from each other in a restaurant that closed down years ago. Your hand near mine, fingers almost linked with mine. You were almost mine. How was your drive? Was there a thunderstorm? I heard there were storms in Kentucky and it was along your route. How is your sister? Is she doing well? Was she able to find a new job?
I wait for the surprise. Locked hearts. Your eyes. Drifting from wave to wave, drifting away from me. I wait for the goodbye. It’s always goodbye. The too long roads ahead. The miles you count: 150. 149, 148, the miles you count alone. But you’re not alone. The voice that says, “you are in Michigan,” cutting off the rock song you’ve been listening to since you were sixteen. It makes you feel young again. We can be young again. We won’t ever be young again.
Questions you won’t let me ask: where do we stand? What lines am I able to paint over, redefine? Why do your shadows erase the path once I learn the way? I assume it’s fear. Your closed mouth, with its perfect stitches that must’ve taken hours and the timber of your voice in the background.
Your voice carries into the walls of the restaurant. The woman in the mural, with her sash, sways to your sentences. Sentences I wish I could hear. You turn your head to the window. You pause and the woman in the mural dances in the aisle. She brushes her sash across your face and twirls as she walks by me. You tell me we’ll come back here soon. Maybe next Wednesday. Tomorrow, I say. You shake your head, I don’t think I’ll make it. But we’ll be here every night, eating the same thing, scouring the conversations in the back of my mind. Things I mean to say.
THE END
Author Bio: Pam Avoledo's work can be found at pamavoledo.com.