I feel like my life revolves around the moments where I am sitting in the floor of my room, surrounded by all of my things, waiting to pack up and move across the state. I loathe packing--I always have--but there's something therapeutic about it, especially with Michael sitting here beside me, "helping" as he talks.
"Cleveland, Mississippi, is where people go to die," I conclude. "Nobody likes it here and they don't like each other, but it's the Bermuda triangle--or, well, the Mississippi Delta. You come here and no one hears from or sees the person that came here again."
Michael agrees vehemently, sipping his beer as I fold thirty tee-shirts that I never wear but carry around out of necessity to do so. I've always seen him as so beautiful and better than I am. He throws lavish parties with exclusive guest lists, drove a nice car and there was talk that he'd dated other boys in the past, but he'd never confirm or deny. That was okay with me--I enjoyed imagining all the things he'd do in his spare time, from drinking chai and reading graphic novels, to watching French silent films with any boy and/or girl who'd wanted to see him that night.
"People are wrong about me, though," he confided, "Any time I spend with any one is of my own doing. People don't seek me out, and they come to my house just to get shipwrecked."
I think of his glass coffee table and the paintings on the walls in his living room. I've never been to his house, but I have my visions. I am never one of the people he sought, but I never seek him either. I am no better than the bitches we were ranting about, but I let him continue as I took the books from the credenza.
"I made up my mind to be happy here, but I spend my spare time sleeping. I'm scared of this and that, but I'm making it."
Michael, I said last week that I have no use for you unless we're dancing together in perfect time. I'm looking at you right now and you're blinking back diamonds but I understand and it makes everything so much more painful than it has to be. All this time I spent thinking that it was my fault and your fault and their faults for letting ourselves be changed and letting the love we once had fade into a corn field on the outskirts of Renova. All this time, I thought we controlled our own destinies...but not so much. My life, integrity, and self-esteem are packed into these revolving boxes and moves from place to place. Michael's faith in God and humanity lives in another town, not in this black hole of a rural collection of hypocrites that delight in cars, clothes and spending money they don't have. The trees don't make oxygen for us, but they stand and sympathise--they used to be grand, green and producers of the best things money can't buy, but now they hunker over the bright lights and whisper truths amongst themselves.
Michael and I, well, we're getting out. We're getting out for weeks at a time, and this time we're regrowing bits of ourselves in Petri dishes and letting happiness mold over all of the resetment we've bred here. When we come back, we'll have a reserve to make it through a semester, if that, before they crush us again. It's a beautiful cycle. I fucking hate it.

Labels: almost memories, cleveland, hate, love, michael, mississippi, the delta