Waterspouts
by Kurt Kirchmeier
It rained at the graveyard yesterday. I stood there for a long time, looking at your headstone, thinking about our bonsai tree. I'm still watering it. It's still brown. Give it a few months, you said, who knows? Maybe it'll come back. Plants do that sometimes.
Came home drenched to the bone, dazed. It's been like that lately. Hazy. Scatterbrained. Getting up, pacing through the kitchen, opening cupboards even though I'm not hungry. I used to do that when I was a kid, just rummage around, thinking some wonderful treat might have appeared behind the cereal box since the last time I looked. I ever tell you about that?
I don't even have a cereal box anymore. Not that I'd look behind it; I'm old enough now to know better. I hate cereal.
Had that same dream last night. Waterspouts. Twin columns of frothy white pirouetting on an ocean of blue. Remember that one? You used to run your fingers through my hair. Still don't know what it means exactly. Still don't know why it scares me so much.
Better that than the sirens, though. So many nightmares. So much noise.
I was thinking again about that party we went to in August, how you laughed, how everyone laughed. You had that sparkle in your eyes, kept looking at me funny because I kept looking at you. I squeezed your hand under the table, felt your heart beating in your wrist, every palpitation like the echo of some far off explosion made manifest beneath your skin.
Our third date only, but that's when it hit me. That's when I knew for sure.
It's dark here, dark all the time. Do they let you listen where you are? Does my voice sound different? Seems different to me. But then, everything seems different. Hollow. Empty wine flutes still on the counter, our initials engraved in the glass.
I miss you. I'll always miss you. But it's been a few months now. I was thinking maybe I should throw the bonsai tree away. Would that be okay? Would you forgive me? I can't keep watering it forever.
Born and raised on the Canadian prairies, Kurt Kirchmeier comes from a large family of two brothers and five sisters. Kurt's fiction has appeared in Kaleidotrope, Raven Electrick, Reflection's Edge, and in several other small press print and online magazines.