The End of A Year, A Glimpse At A Galaxy

Merry Christmas! And happy holidays to those who don’t celebrate. I gotta be honest with you, readers. December drains me, especially this year. There’s so many things that I’d love to start a conversation about. But I’m tired, emotionally (and physically- ask my family, my eyes don’t open until 1 PM, if even then!) So we look to 2021. I’ll be rested and ready then, and I hope you are too, readers! For now, in the spirit of the season of giving, I thought I’d give you guys a sneak peek at something I’ve been working on for a few years well. Meet my character Amy, a depressed writer trying to get back into the swing of things!

I did not expect to spend my night setting up an impromptu camp in the middle of a New York forest.

I did not expect to find entertainment in watching Sam fumble over herself trying to secure the tent, refusing any offered help from me.

But sometimes the best memories come out of unexpected events.

It’s late. I have no idea what type of late it is, but it’s late. The light of Sam’s torchlight flickers occasionally and cool wind blows through the flaps of our tent. I lie down across Sam’s lap and she plays with my hair. We make a game of linking random lines from poems and plays and books. At some point, I become too sleepy to continue coherent speech and I just stop. Let silence fall to soak in the moment.

It should feel completely absurd to me that I have ditched the person I am closest to in the comfort of my own apartment to spend the night in a tent with a near stranger. It should feel absolutely wrong that I feel closer to this person whose last name I’m not entirely sure of than I have with the person who took my virginity.

It should, shouldn’t it.

“I’m glad you called me,” Sam whispers, pulling me out of my own head. I smile at her.

“Now I know that I can call you any time my heart yearns for a spontaneous adventure.” I get Sam to laugh.
“It’s unfair that you’ve read about my life, yet I don’t know yours nearly as well, Sam.”
“It’s unfair that I’m not the love of your life, but I guess we don’t always get justice in life, huh.”
“See, that’s unfair. I stated a fact and you counteracted my fact with your opinion.”
Sam’s hand pauses in my hair for a split second before she continues her rhythmic stroking. “My last name is Acker. I want to change it, but it’s too much of a hassle. I read that your dad was a bit of an asshole- is that true?”
I nod. Oh, my father. My family on a whole. An aspect of my life I’m dying to forget. I’ve never been able to articulate how I feel about them. They never hit me, they fed me, kept me housed for a while. But he didn’t love me. I would never feel it. A story to keep in my head and off the pages. It makes me wonder how Sam would know about that, but people have a way of finding out things, I guess.

“I’m sorry about that, Amy.”

I look up at Sam and she looks down at me, and we share that moment.

We share a silence heavy with a blissful buzz and hearts pounding.

“I’ve never been in love and been loved back at the same time.”
“Yeah?” Her fingers delicately pull at the tight curls of my hair. I feel like I can hear the unspoken words in the air. I feel something stir in me. It’s not love, I argue with myself. It can’t be love, I say. Love is timed, love is a buildup. Love is calculated and plotted out and it won’t come before it’s time.

It can’t be love, I fight myself down. I don’t even know the first thing about her.

Fuck it. “I would love you, Sam. I would love you.” I feel my throat clenching, physically fighting my self restraint to let me fucking talk. “I want to feel so deeply in love with you that it hurts. I-” I go blank. My throat closes out of both a lack and an overabundance of words. I feel something so much that there is no expression for it. There is no sequence of consonants and vowels, no connection of lines and shades and tones, no sequence of movement, no sound to express every bit of emotion I’m feeling.

It wells up in every space and crevice inside of me until I’m crying. Sam’s hand passes over my cheek, and she’s looking me in the eyes. Her lips part ever so slightly and so do mine, I’m basically willing her to lean into me. She pauses an iota above me, and our eyes scan each other in the dark. “Can I kiss you?”

Everyone tells you about sparks. It’s a big cliche. It’s been said so much that it seems so fake and it feels like if I tell you that as our lips touch I feel exactly that, you would doubt me. But I mean it. Little intense clusters of so much electricity that it’s visible to the human eye how bright and sizzling it is. Sparks. Early man fell in love, kissed, saw the sparks from the fires they created and said they are one and the same.

Stay safe out there folks. See you in the new year!