The story still weighed on me somehow. Tugging on my right brain and stirring up my insides. It helped to hold onto something. The rim of a notebook, the edge of my shirt. I could graze the seams with my fingertips until the discomfort passed. Never gone. Just back to its source or however physics best explains. I couldn’t tell if you were annoyed to hear it again. The one with the sound of his voice and the redundant details of California. My sunburnt skin and the way his car smelled. The noiseless neighborhoods and moderately populated towns. Full of people that hadn’t understood us. They still don’t. Though it didn’t hurt the same way it used to. Something like it being broken from the start. Do you remember what we talked about? Pregnant bellies, not soon but one day. You said you could do it on your own. I knew you could. But as soon as I told you how it ended I could see the color in your face change hues. Or could we blame it on the shadows from the clouds coming in? All of it sounded like a song we’d heard before. Still you never rushed those final notes between us. Not even when the bits of water from the sky interrupted all that was left of them.
