24-Hour Story

HER
11:00 PM- What I remember: I remember feeling numb. I remember running out of the apartment, I remember feeling like I couldn’t breathe, the air was too thick for habitation in this mundane apartment. I remember his curly hair cascading over his forehead. I remember the furrow in his brow and his comforting arms, extending to me. I remember it was raining and the asphalt was glossed with water droplets. I remember he was yelling at me to “come back!” as I ran carefully down the slick flights of stairs. I remember looking back at him from the bottom of the stairs. I remember running out into the rain, letting it soak through to my clothes-no, they were his clothes. His Ramones t-shirt. I remember how he ran down the stairs and came out into God’s tears with me. I remember him grabbing my arm and soft words spilling from his full, pink lips, “please don’t go.” I remember the water falling from my eyes synchronizing with the water falling from the sky. I remember getting into my car and driving away.

3:00 AM- What I miss: I miss the smell of his shampoo. I miss the way his eyes scrunch up when he laughs. I miss his laugh. I miss how it was unapologetic and reverberated through his apartment. I miss how he played connect-the-dots with the freckles scattered across my nose. I miss how he twirled the ends of my hair between the pads of his fingers. I miss the long car rides. I miss the clouds of smoke coming from the balcony, early in the morning. I miss the polaroid pictures of him. I miss his thoughts; beautiful, insightful, creative thoughts. I miss his poetry. I miss the syntax and crafting of his sentences. I miss the way he would say: “I write because you exist.” I miss the way he would kiss me in the mornings; soft and delicate as if my lips were a flower petal that he didn’t want to bruise. I miss the way he would kiss me at night; needy, like my lips would provide him the oxygen to keep breathing.

4:00 AM- What I hate: I hate the way he made me love him. I hate how vulnerable he makes me. I hate how he doesn’t shave for days on end and how his rough stubble brushes against my cheek. I hate the way he makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; spreading the peanut butter and the jelly on the same slice of bread. I told him that you spread peanut butter on one side and jelly on the other. I hate how he could sense what was wrong with me. I hate that I can’t hide anything from him. I hate how he locked up the pills, as if I couldn’t handle myself around massive amounts of drugs that could kill me. I hate the way he checked my arms and legs. I hate the way he drives. I hate the way he loves me.

6:00 AM- What I love: I love his long, dexterous fingers. I love his old record player. I love his full, cotton-candy colored lips. I love the way he talked about what he loved. I love how he talked about me to his mom. I love his band t-shirts. I love his acoustic guitar. I love the callouses on the tops of his fingers. I love the smear of ink on his cheeks. I love the lead caked onto his right hand, on the outside of his pinky. I love the way he sleeps. He sleeps as if the world is a weight placed on his shoulders. He sleeps as if it is the last time he will sleep again. I love the freckle on his left temple. I love the tiny crinkles by his eyes when he smiles. I love the way his hand interlocked with mine as if it was the final piece to a jigsaw puzzle. I love him and everything about him.

7:00 AM- What makes me feel safe: He double checks the locks on the front door. He tells me: “I’m here, it’s okay.”  He wraps his arms around me and I feel safer than anywhere else in the world. He walks on the side of the sidewalk closest to the street. He stays up with me when I think the world is going to cave in on itself. He helps me study for big tests. He has friends who are girls but he’s never once touched them while we’ve been together. At night, his arms wrap snugly around me and it’s as if we’re a lock and key, finally matching up.

8:00 AM- What confuses me: He doesn’t love himself. He thinks I’m going to leave him. It confuses me that he doesn’t know how breathtaking his writing is. It confuses me that he has to brush his teeth twice before bedtime. It confuses me that he won’t talk to his father, even though he’s reached out to him multiple times.

11:00 AM- What I desire: I desire his lips on my lips. I desire his strong arms wrapped around my waist. I desire to occupy his thoughts. I desire his inner thoughts to be “this reminds me of her” or “she would like this.” I desire his knowledge, I want him to teach me all that he knows. I desire to know what he is thinking of, or not thinking of. Is he thinking of our future? Is he thinking of his next short story or poem? I desire to know how he feels. I desire his mess. I want to know about the messy parts of his life and I desire to mop up the mess when it’s stopped.

HIM
12:00 PM- What I miss: I miss the short puffs of breath from her mouth when she sleeps. I miss the click-clacking of the typewriter in the early hours of the morning. I miss the beautiful words that she would speak. I miss the words she would write- I miss writing about her. I miss her hair blowing in the wind when we would zoom down the highway.

2:00 PM- What I desire: I desire her legs wrapped around my back. I desire her lips pressed softly onto my skin. I desire her presence and her ambiance. I desire her thoughts to climb into the farthest reaches of my brain and make me think about things that I had never pondered.

3:30 PM- What I hate: I hate her doubt. I hate that she doubts herself. I hate that she doubts her writing and that she doubts that she has talent. I hate that way she makes peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I told her you put the peanut butter and jelly on the same slice of bread so the flavor is the same.

4:45 PM- What I love: I love the way she lit up even the darkest room. I love the way the sun used to shine into her blue eyes and make them look like translucent pools of ocean water. I love her brown hair and the way it bobs just above her shoulders. I love the freckles that are scattered over her body, I especially love the ones on her shoulder blades. I love the way the rays of sunlight would create even more freckles on her face and you could always tell when she had been in the sun. I love the way she would belt out lyrics in the car. She always had a lovely voice. Late at night, she would whisper to herself, writing down her most private thoughts in her moleskin journal. I love how she thought I was asleep. I love the callus formed on the middle finger of her right hand. I love her and everything about her.

5:00 PM-What makes me feel safe: We laugh together at the smallest, simplest things. We have similar dreams and goals. She wants to finish her undergrad at NYU and then write books and I want to finish school  and go on to become a songwriter. We both want a family. We both want to stay in the city. I feel the most safe late at night when she lays her head on my bare chest and dozes off while mumbling how much she loves me.

6:00 PM What confuses me: It confuses me that she folds everything. If you were to open her drawers you would find all of them organized, her clothes all bundled up in perfect squares. Everything has to be clean and in it’s space. It confuses me that she has to have control of everything. She says it has a lot to do with her parents fighting so much, so I try to help her out as much as I can, but it’s still hard. It confuses me that she was so mad at me when I told her.

7:00 PM- What I remember: I remember her running of out of my apartment. I remember her face was red and her freckles looked ashy. She was never this upset with me. Yes, she had been hurt before but I remember the sadness radiating from her body was more than I had ever seen. I remember asking myself why she couldn’t deal with my sickness as if she was the one who had cells multiplying rapidly, over and over again in her body.

THEM
8:00 PM- What happened: He was diagnosed during the week of their move in together. He thought he could hide it. At least for a while. He didn’t know how to tell her in the first place, the doctors had said it was treatable because of the early diagnosis. He figured that he should spare her the hurt and just fight it off himself. He was a strong, self-disciplined man like that. As time went on, he had to continually lie to her and say he was going to some place (he would make up where on the spot), when in actuality he was on his way to the doctor’s office, to get medicine pumped into his veins. When clumps of his curlicues started to fall out he knew that he had to tell her. He was livid with the doctors for giving him false hope. They said that it was most likely treatable but when you have cancer you miss the part where they say most likely. He didn’t include himself in the statistics. He clung to hope as if it was the only thing he had, but he forgot that he had her.

9:00 PM- What happened: He sat her down on the couch one evening after a marathon of her favorite 80’s chick-flicks. He willingly obliged to watch them when she strung of a list of famous films, he loved watching movies with her, even if they were “chick-flicks.” He could appreciate a bit of Christian Slater and Winona Ryder once in awhile. The mood of the movie was light, funny and mocking, but the exact opposite mood settled over the apartment. “I have something to tell you,” he said, his voice beginning to get husky.  Her blue eyes began to glisten with the threat of tears. “What is it?” she asked, looking at her lap and playing with the rips in her jeans. He remembered when he was young and would be so terrified of taking the bandage of his latest knee scrape. His mother would just say to rip it right off, cut to the chase, don’t extend the pain any longer than necessary. And so that is what he did. “I have Stage 2 Lymphocytic Leukemia.”

10:00 PM- What happened: The word “cancer” hit her like a bullet train going at 500 miles per hour. She struggled to speak: “You hhh-ave cc-ancer?” she meant to ask a question, but it came out as more of a realization. He slowly nodded his head, his heart felt like it was tied up with rope in his chest. A single tear rolled down her perfect, freckled, porcelain cheek. He began to feel overwhelmed with love and affection for her. He reached to swipe away the stray tear with his thumb but she quickly turned her head away. “Why didn’t you tell me until now?” she asked, clear tension developing in her voice. More tears were falling now. “The doctors told me it was going to be easy to treat because it was diagnosed early, but they say it’s getting worse,” he stammered. “My hair's falling out, I feel sick all the time.” he continued. “Stop.” she said. “Stop talking about it, please. Don’t you realize that I’ve known this whole time? I’ve seen your face go from bright to dull and pained. I’ve seen the clumps of hair in the sink. I knew before you even told me.” She was full on sobbing now, trying to string sentences together through the sobs that wracked her body. “I need to leave, I need to get out of here. I can’t see you like this. It’s killing me.” She gets up and grabs her keys and purse. “No, don’t go. Please. I need you.” “I can’t, you know I watched my mother rot and suffer from Leukemia. Why you have to go and get ---- cancer?” He wish he had the answer, but he also knew the question was meant to be rhetorical. It was not as if there was an exact reason, why he, this man in particular got cancer. She ran out the door, down the stairs. It was raining. She loved the rain and it seemed ironic for something so joyous to be occurring when something so disastrous was just spoken. He follows her and runs down the stairs. He grabs her arm: “Please stay. I need you.” he begs. He would get on the ground and grovel for her to stay.  For a moment, he thought she was going to stay and work through this with him. He knew she would come back, she just needed time. Maybe if he had tried harder she would have, but she just kissed him on the cheek and got into her car.

11:00 PM- What happened: He thought when he had been diagnosed with cancer that she would be at his funeral, but life has a way of turning things around. The funeral was held at 11:00 AM and the small lunch gathering was held afterwards at her favorite teahouse in the city. When she left he thought she was going to come back, but the rain was heavy that night and had other plans for her. The funeral was lovely, nonetheless and at the end of his eulogy they played Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra, her favorite song. He thought it was a perfect tribute to her.
It now has been many years since she died and he knew that she would want him to move on, have a family, get married. But, the man did not move on. He stayed in his apartment all day and at 11 o'clock each night he would play Fly Me to the Moon on the old record player she had bought for him.