Article and Art by Linnea Anderson
last time i saw him we were walking along the railroad track. we slingshotted pebbles, stacked stones, and knocked them down. i handed him a rock. told him i liked the look of it.
he said, do u wanna keep it? i declined. the rock wasn’t really special, just a way to break the silence.
a magical card told me everything lost will come back in higher ways. i think that could be true for me, in my life, with my things. but not for us.
this is a long haul. the kind trains take. but we can’t seem to follow the rails.
instead, we’re each in our own car. it’s an awkward caravan. only stopping every once and a while for gas and a chat. what’s new? did i tell you about that? glad you had a good birthday.
not the conversations of people who are in love.
and we always get back in our cars. i want to follow him on the same off-ramps. but sometimes i pass by and he just lets me keep driving instead. i get excited when he signals for an exit. it reminds me that he wants to see me too.
i tell my friends we’ll get married one day. but when i think of him now, i can’t even recall what he sounds like. just the way he makes me nervous.
knowing him is knowing my high school self. i fear deserting her will make me too rigid.
she, all lust and an infinite crush. a little body of wonder. feelings i can never seem to hold onto anymore.
past relationships shredded and scattered all those sensitivities. the connections that had beginnings and ends. they don’t come easy.
but in my brain, he is endless.
he can stay perfect. and i can stay immature. we can go to the movies and i can get nervous.
i’ve thought of him in all my passing relationships. figured that one day, he would set them all straight.
tell me i’m wrong to love only passively. tell me it’s not playing pretend. tell me it was silly to keep quiet all this time. tell me the game is fun. but it should end.
i figured one day i’d have some sort of revelation, know how to act, tell him how it is. but the divine hasn’t guided me yet. and sometimes, i think it just wants me to keep stumbling.
because where’s the fun in a mutual feeling? it is so finite. if i’ve held onto the game long enough, it can’t end.
his voice will change or stay the same. i won’t be able to tell. he’ll just live on that railroad track.
and i’ll just have to sit with it.
do you want to keep it?
that day, he accidentally left that rock on the passenger seat of my car before i dropped him off at home. i didn’t know he had kept it. he didn’t know it fell out of his pocket.
he played it off fine.
i knew the rock wasn’t special but maybe now it is. i hope he has the memory of it in safe keeping.
when the cards are down, the game comes to an end. we finally give up on our cars and catch a train instead.