Calypso

The connection that killed space between us as children once again wakes me in the early hours, only now I don't want to be there with you. I hear your heart pound. Your dread rigidifies my muscles. Is the numbness that prevents me from running mine or yours?

I curled up on the bench seat and laid my head in your lap. It was only two in the morning. We still had four hours before your mother got up for work and you had to be home.
"You'll always belong to me, even when we're old and married and you have wrinkles around those pretty eyes of yours," you said.
"You'll forget about me one day," I said. "Someday you'll be busy coaching ball, or troweling back some archaeological site and I won't be anywhere around."
You cupped my chin in your palm and brushed my bottom lip with your thumb. "What we have isn't about marriage or love or being together. We both know that."
Your tears fell on my face. Neither of us wiped them away. We knew they belonged there, in that moment, acknowledging the truth.
"How will we know?" I asked.
"It'll just happen on its own. We'll drift to other places. I don't worry though. You always with me in here." He pointed to his head.
"We're dreamers," I said.
"We're poetic souls, rhythms of the calypso. We need that yearning and not knowing at the same time. That's what will get us through life. That's what will keep us coming back to one another whether in life or in thought."

Anxiety washes over my body like the sea. The bedsheets grit against my skin. Your heart pounds in my ears, rushed, rhythmic like bare hands on the leather pad of a drum. My tears fall, wet the reed on my horn, and we play a duet.