Confession Weather

We sit out on the porch, sipping our wine in silence. You've grown taller yet so have I. There's so much to talk about but neither of us say a thing. I think we both know it'd be a futile endeavor. Then, just like that, you make a comment about the humidity. Why couldn't we have drank inside? The flies are growing irksome. You follow that comment up with a poor transition into worldly affairs. What do you think about the oil spill? I shrug and make a drunken, incoherent reply. This reassures you that I'm paying attention so you keep talking. Did you hear about the Icelandic Prime Minister marrying her girlfriend? What about the mother of two in Iran who's to be stoned to death? And that 86-year old bedridden woman in Oklahoma who was tasered by police because she took an aggressive posture in her bed? So funny.

At this point, I'm barely registering what you're saying. I simply nod my head, my thoughts moving on to a song I can't remember the name of but whose lyrics are clear in my mind. You move on to your life. School is going great. Every night this semester you've blazed and gotten outrageously high. Your professors totally love you. The only downside right now is that your photography skills haven't shown any improvement.

I think you're pulling at straws here.

What of what you're saying am I going to care about? What will I affectionately respond to? Red or white? I think the answer's pretty clear to you but you keep going. Family's moving soon. Last summer's fling doesn't show any desire of wanting to return to where you two left off. Your voice has changed. Drastically low, soggy and sad. Lyrics aren't so clear anymore. What was the name of that song again?

Then you ask the question that sobriety prevented you from conjuring. The snake in the garden: "At what point did you know you were in love?". That one I registered. It was the way you asked, eager for the truth yet sub-consciously doubting your ability to handle it. I stroke the rim of my wine stained glass, run a hand through my hair. It'll be hard but someone's gotta do it. Finally, after a long enough pause, I reply: "I don't quite know. It's hard to say, really. I guess it happened after I wrote him a long letter in February when we decided it would be best if we were just friends. It was when I finished writing it that I realized this was the first time I had ever written a boy a letter about how I felt. What was that? No, the card I made for you on your eighteenth birthday doesn't count. This was different. Why? Well, I guess it was my naked desperation. I wanted him so badly to understand that no matter what, I didn't want to be without him. It didn't matter if we remained just friends. I've never met anyone like him before. After I realized that, there was no going back. I was in love."

You sit there quietly for a few minutes, fiddling with a stray hair. It's a sign of anxiety. I've struck a chord and I know you'll never admit that that was difficult to listen to. You already knew that he and I have been dating for a while now. You knew, yet the after-effect didn't become apparent until after the first "Yes, I do" to your "Do you love him?". It was like this night was premeditated, a live-action roleplay of what's been going on in your head for weeks. You then get up and sit right back down. You're pretending to seem unsure of how that really affected you but don't worry, I already know. I'm beginning to feel like an awful hostess so I offer you some more wine. You ignore the munificent peace-treaty and instead begin reciting new words you don't know the definition of that you encountered in a book composed of philosophical essays that I think you told me about a week ago. Magnanimity. Truculent. Cantankerous. Lugubrious. Your intoxication has certainly deepened but there's more to it. There's always more to it with you.

When you're finally finished, we're both silent for a long while. Then I begin humming the song whose name I can't remember. Soon the hum develops a voice and I'm quietly singing the lyrics. Slow, steady, fervently. Then, shortly after I begin singing, you begin to sing along with me:

Rain is millions of tiny speech bubbles unused
The collected breaths of mutes
And all our silent exhalations
Where we should've put words
Or words we had no one to tell
Emptied from clouds like clearing horns spit valves
Coming back to us now
To remind us what we meant to say
Or that we meant to say something