Arianna Baum-Hommes

How Things Will Happen

“Let me take you somewhere,” I say. And we drive, that road that takes us

somewhere else. That road we got onA once, but our headlights went out and we couldn’t see without streetlights. We turned around. We don’t turn around today.

We stop at a State Forest, but it feels like so much more. I feel like so much more. I watch her curl her hair around her finger and I forget to breath. In out, I tell myself. In out. In out.

She has no idea that I’m looking. And I think: I could look at you forever.

I get out of the car, heavy. I am waiting to lose her. I have always been waiting to lose her. Today I think, maybe today. We walk to the waterfall and I can tell she doesn’t see me, doesn’t even know I’m there. Today, I think.

I wait on a rock while she swims. The pool below the waterfall is small, but she is alone. The sun burns hot on my skin, but she was made for it. She is glowing.

When she walks behind the waterfall I can’t see her anymore. She’s been gone for so long, I just give up. The rock feels sharp under my legs. It’s grown more painful as time passes. And then her hand pushes through the water, palm out, fingers spread, stopping me. It shakes a little, wet. Then it disappears again. She is hiding.

I’ve lost her. I’ve lost her, I think. I remember just having her.

Then her body bursts forth from the water. Flying. I wish the air was thicker so it could cradle her more. I wish she was a feather and would float. But she falls. She falls and all I can do is watch the water split around her. It is too late to stop. She falls. And I watch her.

She climbs from the water in a cloak of droplets. Wet feet on warm rock. The footsteps lead to me. 

She lies with her head in my lap. Her skin is fragile; I can watch the blood moving under temples.

It’s simple, really.

She is effervescent, luminous. I touch her and she nearly dissolves into the light.

“I’ll do anything for you.”

“That’s an awfully big promise.” Her lips barely move when she speaks. Then, “I’m not sure why I’m even here anymore”

And that’s when I lose her.

Her body is here, certainly, but the glow in her eyes slips into a dull numbness.

Her hands, her fingers, are slack and loose. She still breathes, certainly, but she doesn’t care anymore.

And I can barely look at her.