A hot cup of coffee and a blanket wrapped around me this morning from the wind and the rain, while I'm tracing tiny planets and little wobbly umbrellas all over the inside of the lightly fogged window overlooking the water in Caleb's bedroom. There's one light on this morning but it's so dark from the storm. He's checking stocks and reading emails and I'm listening to the new Starset album Horizons which came out overnight and it's exceeding my expectations by far. Another masterpiece of cinematic space alternative rock but better. I don't even know how to describe it but I know I love it.
Especially the last minute and eleven seconds of Devolution, but I'm only halfway through and there's so much more to come, so I'm glad to be sober and present for this beautiful deviation.
He keeps coming over and surprising me with a kiss on my shoulder or the top of my head. Pulls off the headphones every now and then to my great annoyance, asking me if there are any ghosts and I shake my head to change the subject. I don't think he's going to get Lochlan's privilege of total honesty and even if he did I'm not talking about this with him. Not this morning, even after he was so sweet last night, and he kept me present and he was controlled and kind and when I said I was going to leave he said he wished I wouldn't but he understand so then I was touched and I stayed where I was, and he has a little time left and then I turn into a pumpkin again. A big goopy, rotten, carved-long-ago forgotten pumpkin on a porch step somewhere unsafe.
Or so I imagine it. It's always on the metal pull-down steps of the fortune-teller's wagon, as that's the unsafest place I can think of next to the camper Lochlan burned but he couldn't burn the wagon because it didn't belong to him, but oh, how he wanted to. Instead I take one of the ripped-off doors from the room where I keep my memories and hold it in front of me with both hands, using it to push back against the thoughts that threaten to ruin another good day. An imaginary wooden shield and I am an imaginary knight-girl with my armor of tears.
Time to go, Caleb says and I turn, shaking off the thoughts now starting to run faster inside my head. He's holding out my things in one hand, an offering to the alpha gods he is ruled by, a volunteer in this army just so he can have a place at all. I take my clothes and let the blanket fall, but he grabs it, and rolls it up in his arms before putting it on the bed. He turns back and I am dressing quickly, or as quickly as I can with one hand. He steps in to help, hesitantly until I give my approval and I let him finish everything right down to pulling my hair all the way through the neck of Ben's big hoodie that I stole again.
I hope this was a respite for you, he says, suddenly doubtful again, sad almost, from the ghosts and the living alike. I pretend I didn't hear him but he's used to it.