"I fell in love with you," he whispered, hardly believing that after all this time, he was finally saying the words aloud. He kept his eyes on the cloud spotted sky above, his hands tangled in the dewy grass.
Michael Mayes, 21 and head-over-heels heart-taken. It was impossible to focus his attention elsewhere; his thoughts all starred the blue eyed brunette from Oregon he had only met months ago. He had just returned from a two year tour in Iraq, and she from a school trip to Italy. A crowded airport, hundreds of people, thousands of luggage items, and theirs just happened to be the same one.
And when their hands had touched grabbing for the suitcase they each thought was their own, he knew. Michael had never been certain of anything in his life. But a single touch, a single glance, a single apologetic smile, and he was hooked.
"I know it sounds cliche," he said, rushing to get his words out before she could respond to his confession. "But I knew, right in the middle of the Portland International Airport, that you were the one, Rae. You were the girl." Michael watched a ladybug fly in a twirling, unpredictable pattern before it finally landed on a blade of grass, reminding him of the way his head had spun that day. He rolled onto his back, mentally making patterns in the clouds above as he spoke.
"Our hands touched, and I felt it. Right through me. Not here," he said, resting his palm against his heart, "But here." He pointed to his forehead, where a scar rested above his right eyebrow.
"They told me that after they removed the bullet, there would be some weird side effects," he said, tracing a finger over the scar. "But the only effect it ever had was that day. When I saw the future we would have together. I never told you, it sounds insane, I know, but..." he smiled, remembering the images that passed his mind's eye that day. "I saw how happy we would be, and I knew. Rae, I knew.
"I wasn't supposed to survive that surgery. They said there was a one in five shot I wouldn't end up brain damaged. A vegetable, the doc said. But when I woke up post-op, my nurse smiled, said it'd been a success. She said I must've had a guardian angel watching me, a reason to stay.
"That was supposed to be you, Rae." Michael rolled off his back to stare at the headstone in front of him. The cold marble was smooth under his fingertips as he traced her name, but all he wanted to do was smash it into a million pieces.
It wasn't fair, this shouldn't have happened. He was the one who had gone off to war. He was the one who shouldn't have lived.
A drunk driver and a rain slick road thought otherwise.
But he wasn't bitter. Not anymore.
"You've taught me so much, Rae," he said, his hand never leaving the headstone. He could feel her, her presence, resting her hand upon his shoulder as she always did when he was overcome with emotions he didn't want to express. But she couldn't pull Michael into her arms, couldn't kiss his forehead as she always did, couldn't whisper reassuring words that would bring him back to a better reality.
"So many people are telling me to move on. That I'm young, and that there's so much to life. That forgetting would ease the pain. But I will never," the word almost escaped his lips in anger, and he fought to control the shaking that was rattling his bones. He calmed himself, brushing away the tears that had escaped his eyes with the back of his palm. "I won't forget. I could never forget. Not you, not all you've changed in me.
"Here, here, and here," he pointed to his heart, and mind and ears.
"You'll always be, babe. I promise. The spark you sent through me, that'll live on, in me."
He kissed the top of the marble gravestone, as she would his forehead, and brushed his hand against the letters of her name once more.
"Rest, my Raven. I'll see you in the sky."
© 2012 | Jazelle Handoush
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