Kissed Her

I can feel the bruises forming beneath the sockets of my eyes, the lids heavy with the tears I haven’t managed to spill yet as I let my lashes flutter softly in an attempt to close. She’s smiling as she waves at me.
The blue of her dress matches his tie and the enraptured glow in her eyes as Kirsten pulls them over to the side of the arena for a photo. Everyone is just milling about now, laughing, trying not to spill food on their clothes and wishing that the committee had been smart enough to provide chairs. They probably thought it’d be too difficult to provide chairs for two hundred and fifty teenagers in addition to the food.
We’re all just waiting for the final call now so we can put the gowns over our prom attire and start the ceremony.
I look towards my date, who’s in conversation with a girl who was in our math class. We’re dressed in a loosely matching fashion, both in complementary shades of green that could mean we’d planned it or it was accidental. It was accidental by the way; I chose my dress to complement hers. She doesn’t know though.
And I intend to keep it that way.
I watch her detach herself from his arms, laughing as he kisses her lightly on the lips, his fingers lingering on her waist as she turns and starts over towards me. “Sarah, take another photo with me.” This is a demand, not a request. I pull my camera out of my matching purse and hand it over to Kirsten, who’s now been unofficially designated the night’s photographer.
I wrap my arm around her waist and squeeze gently, not enough for Kirsten to detect as she fumbles, trying to balance three cameras at once. It’s still enough for her to notice though, as her expression freezes in a large smile.
“Don’t,” she whispers, “Not now.” Her breath is in my hair, her right earring softly scraping my cheek as she turns to meet my eyes.
“Then when?” I mutter under my breath as I reach up to adjust one of the loose curls of her hair. She doesn’t answer. The flash goes off and one of the chaperons starts yelling for everyone to get into their gowns.
She squeezes my hand reassuringly as she lets go to retrieve her camera from Kirsten and I feel the ring on her left hand bite into my fingers before she lets go.
There’s ten minutes before the ceremony starts.

“We shouldn’t,” she gasps. I don’t answer but continue running my fingers through her hair, tracing the lines of her face and the curve of her lips. The basement is dark and the movie is playing loud enough to cover any sounds that might travel through the heating pipes. My brother is in the garage with his guitar, trying to rally the half of his band that bothered to show up for practice. My parents left for the movies an hour ago.
We’re practically alone.
This is the second time we’ve kissed. The first one doesn’t count because we’d both been drunk and it’d been a dare. Plus her boyfriend had been watching.
Her hands slowly curl inwards, clutching my thighs as I lean forward and softly brush my mouth against hers.
“Again,” she whispers as I pull back.
“Again,” I mumble against her mouth as she lifts her hands up, tangling them in my hair, pulling me back towards her.

I have no idea where my parents are seated in the arena. I’d told them to sit on the left so they’d be able to see my face as I walk over to shake hands with the principal and receive a fake diploma. The government will mail us out the real ones sometime in the middle of august after all the high school graduation examination results have come back. In the mean time we get a piece of paper with our name stating we’re a part of the graduating class and are allowed to take part in the after party.
We manage to shuffle our way into our seats, aiming for a semblance of control. We’ve barely found it as the opening speech ends and the first name is called. Ten seconds later the first beach ball appears.
I’ve found where she’s sitting, in the middle of the opposite side of the stage, at the end of her row. She claps wildly as her boyfriend crosses the stage, the speaker droning on about his plans after graduation. I try to blur them over in my mind.
I only want to watch her for as long as I can.
We’re now on our third beach ball and we’re only half way through the ‘c’s. The others were confiscated as quickly as the teachers could manage. I have no idea how many more we’re going to go through. It looks like it’s going to be a long night.
They call her row and now I’m counting down until she crosses the stage. The girl three people before her trips over her heels on her way up the stairs. She sits up laughing, stands and takes a bow before she stumbles over to receive her diploma.
Two left.
One.

“This has to end.” She sits up, drawing my blankets over her breasts as she turns back to me and frowns. I’m still smiling from the aftershocks though. She’s naked, willing and in my bed. Things have been going perfectly.
Well, they were.
“What?” Even to my ears that sounded hollow.
“You know,” she whispers, “This.” She waves her left arm, the one that isn’t holding up the blanket, in a wide circle to encompass the two of us in my bed. The sight of her nipples as the blanket slips isn’t enough to even out the tone of her words. Besides, I know she didn’t plan that on purpose.
I sit up beside her, gritting my teeth. “Give me a good reason why.”
“I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“I knew that. You knew that. Didn’t stop us the first time.” Or the second. And the third. “What makes it different now?”
“Sarah, I can’t handle this anymore.” Her eyes are wide and from the way the blue in them shimmers I know she’s about to cry. I reach over to put my arm around her shoulder but she shrugs me off.
“I can’t handle the sneaking around. I didn’t expect it to go this far.”
“Don’t tell me this.”
“This needs to end Sarah.”
“It this because we’re friends? Or because we’re both women and you’ve decided you like men better?”
She glares at me. “I don’t even know what to call our relationship Sarah,” she hisses. “All we seem to do is sleep together.”
All the late night movies, all the texts, phone calls, notes in class, all the laughter whips through my head. “That’s not true.” I whisper.
“Sarah, I feel like we’re fuck-buddies,” she says softly.
I feel like she’s slapped me. “I love you.” I whisper as I slowly take her hand and trace my fingers through hers.
“You don’t mean that.” she whispers, “Not like that.”
“Will you just listen to me!”
She shakes your head and slip out of bed before I can tighten my grip on her hand. “He asked me to marry him Sarah. I said yes.”
As I look up at her standing naked in front of my bed, hair tousled, fading hickies left from him trailing up her neck, I feel like I’ve been sicker punched in the gut. She’d told me that I couldn’t leave marks on her.
I finally understand why.

“Emily Collins.” And she’s walking. Hand outstretched to shake the principal’s as the other one tucks her diploma under her arm. I can hear her father and her brothers’ yelling in the background and her mother crying as she walks down the aisle, smile radiant, waving to the crowd.
And I’m laughing and clapping as the tears start to slip down my cheeks. She’s walking, one arm raised in a triumphant wave of victory, the flash of her ring from the arena lights a glint out of the corner of my eyes. I can’t quite manage to hold it in.
It’s all crashing down around me. The scent of her perfume, the scrape of her teeth along the curve of my ear, the press of her lips against mine, the ring of her laugh in my ears, the curve of her smile, the weight of her breasts in my palms and the unspoken misunderstood expectance of a promise.
It’s all finally over.

on the way out

I think I’ll cry on the way out.

Today the heat is electric, an acid on the bones as the hours climb higher into the sky. The blue is hot against the back of my eyes, no breeze as I lay myself down into the grass, green enough after the rain as if it could swallow me whole.

I am hoping it will before the end of my time here.

I am watching everything, as if by doing so I can imprint the curve of the road into me, the lines of the sidewalk, the brick of the buildings along my route home as I bike the hills, breath panting, skin boiling, heart beating along the edge of my mouth while I try to breathe. I am trying to breathe.

As if I can cage it all into my body, smear this feeling across my face, down my neck until the blood of it all reaches my heart. For there are only so many moments left, the beat of this pulse against me, counting down each second until I am gone.

I am finally leaving.

But this was a long time coming.

And I do not know how to express it anymore, as if I could have tried, written the cracks of my history out across my body, stretching the blades of my shoulders down into the page beneath the burn of the sun as I light my pale skin on fire. This is everything in these moments, the flight down the hills, the turn in the roads, the pale lights of the streets in the warm silence of the evening.

I have existed here. Broken my heart against a boy who did not know, shredded my mind to academics, pitched my body forward against the asphalt, cut the lines of language and isolation along my skin, fallen in love with her as we laughed our way past midnight. I am familiar with the taste of the air, the feeling of desperation in the night as the semis roam the highway, the isolation a fever across my skin even as I stretch out my arms and encompass the whole of this town.

But in the end there is no choice but to go. For everything is now ending.

Inamorata

When the alarm went off in the morning the left side of the bed was cold. She knew this even without having to roll over, the lack of tension in the blankets, the soft sound of her breath as the only source of noise in the room. But then again, she’d been the only one in the bed before the lights went out. He hadn’t even bothered going to bed.
Slowly, she pulled herself up, joints snapping, hair trailing down into her eyes as she rubbed the sleep out of them. The blankets were twisted and the faint light of morning was just beginning to creep through the curtains across the small window, painting the room a delicate shade of blue. She smiled weakly. When they had first bought the apartment, she’d tried to get his opinion on things, it was going to be a shared space, a combination of the two of them. In the end she’d given up, slamming doors in frustration, the sound of the keyboard echoing late into the night as he ignored her. She was so used to the sound of his typing that she didn’t even notice it anymore.
She found him in the living room, abandoned cups of coffee in a small circle on the coffee table, stacks of notebooks wobbling precariously next to the half-eaten bagel on a dinner plate, his laptop resting on his knees as he lay sunken back into the couch, eyes closed and snoring softly as his glasses threatened to slide down his nose.
She gently removed his glasses, careful not to wake him, stacked up the dishes and slowly began her march to the kitchen. The empty jam jar was resting unwashed next to the stove, the remains of dinner caught in the sink trap and slowly the sense of unrealistic panic began to grown on her. This had happened before, it would happen again. She was tired of trying to compete when there was no chance. Even after all those years it was still impossible for her to compete against poetry.
She left the dishes in the sink unwashed. The sound of her feet echoed through the hallway as she padded across the floor. And when she came in front of the mirror, she could no longer recognize herself. The angles of her face had changed, the weight of her breasts more pronounced, her hair flatter and her stomach carried a different type of roundness that it hadn’t before. She was no longer the skinny college girl she’d been when they’d first met, impressionable, ready to take on the world, feeling confident enough to move on from the preppy boys she’d dated in high school to men who had an actually opinion on politics, who read poetry and were against the system. Whatever that meant. All she knew is that half way through her second semester she’d met him. By the end of the summer they’d moved in together, two struggling writers who together couldn’t even make a decent part time wage. Six months together turned into a year, then two and three. She’d dropped out of college, stopped writing, gotten a job to pay the rent, cooked dinner when she got home after work and found him on the couch writing.
He was still writing after all these years. Only now he was no longer writing for her.

The front door closed quietly behind her, a force of habit. He’d started yelling at her if she’d done something that could have made him loose his train of through. So now she closed the doors quietly, vacuumed when he was out at poetry readings, and watched TV on the computer with headphones so he wouldn’t hear any background noise. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her his muse, like when they’d first been dating, just a bitch when she distorted the creative energy of the house by opening the pantry door too quickly.
The apartment was on the top of the fifth floor, there was no elevator because that meant the rent was cheaper. She washed laundry in the bathtub because the washer had broken shortly after they’d moved in and hung her clothes up to dry on the rusting balcony rails because the building manager had never bothered to install a dryer. She couldn’t complain through, rent was cheap. Especially since his advances barely covered half of the food bill.
The stairs creaked under her weight as she carefully made her way down, making sure to avoid the rails and the three steps about a quarter of the way down that she’d nearly fallen through last week. The wind was teasing the curls of her hair, still damp from her shower and she could smell the sun rising over the clouds as the city began to slowly grind to life. She pulled a hair elastic from her pocket and tied her hair back before it reverted back to its original state as a bird’s nest. She glanced back up at the apartment, paint peeling off the door, the crack in the window and him asleep on the couch inside. Today, she would go to work, buy groceries after her shift was over, come home, change out of her work uniform and make dinner. Maybe tonight he would eat it, rather than stumbling through the door with MacDonalds in his hands. Maybe tonight he would join her in bed, or at least leave a love poem on her pillow, scribbled on a sheet he’d torn out of one of his notebooks. She gripped the railing tighter, tears threatening to spill. Who the fuck was she kidding? The poetry had ended just before they moved in together, the declarations of love and the sex had followed shortly after.
There was a crack as the railing detached itself from the steps, the staircase starting to sway violently towards the building next to it. With a small scream her left foot slipped out from under her and she slid all the way down to street level, startling the flock of pigeons eating breakfast in the alley.
Heart thudding, she levered herself into standing position so she could assess the damage. The stairs were curved at an awkward angle, almost attempting to give the building on the other side of the alley a hug and the pigeons were cooing loudly in protest of her interruption of their breakfast. Her uniform was ripped at a jagged angle along the side of her ribs, a large chunk of her hair was caught two stories up in the railing, her knees were bloody and now she was late for work. The staircase was the only way back up to the apartment as well.
Laughing, she slowly lowered herself back onto the ground, scattering the pigeons at her feet as the laughter turned into sobs. She phone buzzed at her hip but she ignored it, curled into a ball and cried until she couldn’t breathe any longer. When she was done, she slowly raised her head. The alley was empty, the staircase still broken. She pulled herself up onto her feet, took one last look at the apartment and began to run.

The saleslady’s smile turned into a frown even before she was completely through the door. The walls were lined with various types of footwear, fashionable footwear that would cost her their food budget for the week. “Can I help you?” asked the saleslady, her smile stuck somewhere between a grimace and a sneer in desperation to make a sale. The store was trapped in a back corner of a side street and it was a miracle that it was even open on a Sunday.
“I’m looking for breakup boots,” she said, smiling widely. The saleslady blinked and pointed her towards the back wall. Slowly she made her way to the back of the store and grabbed the first pair of boots she saw, knee high black boots with red shoelaces. She hadn’t bought a new pair of shoes since high school, unable to justify the cost when she couldn’t wear then to work.
He would have laughed at her choice, claiming that no one outside of middle school wears red shoelaces, he also would have yelled at her for the price. He would have claimed that she didn’t understand him, that writing was delicate, that it took time, energy and very specific pieces of your soul that you bargained in exchange of the right twist of words in a sentence. That it was hard for him, why couldn’t she understand that? He would have quoted Rilke to her, forgetting that she was the one who’d introduced him to The Sonnets of Orpheus, had covered his eyes with her hands and whispered the poems in his ears to better showcase the heartbreaking impact it contained. He would have told her he loved her, if he remembered to, without even a hint of poetry in the words.
But he was still sleeping, she hoped, trapped in their apartment on the fifth floor until the staircase got fixed. Which would take a while due to the fact that the manager wasn’t due back from vacation for another two weeks. The saleslady rang the boots through the till, her frown deepening as she paid in cash, counting out coins till the very last cent. Smiling broadly she left, ignoring the fact that the saleslady didn’t even acknowledge her leaving. The heels of her boots echoed on the cement of the sidewalk, the laces making small clicking noises as they swayed while she walked, the bloodstains from her knees were partly covered up by the height of the boots and the side of her shirt was tied together in a knot to hide the rip.
There was no hurry though. She still had plenty of time before the mall closed.

encompassing fever

i can barely look him in the eyes
as i raise my head
wishing that I had longer hair
to help obscure my face
to make me look demure
to overcome the sinking
sensation that i am failing
at being a woman as he places
his hand on the nape of my neck
and tilts me back until i
can see him clearly
good girl
he whispers as he places
his other hand over my eyes
so i can’t see him
as he bends down to kiss me
slow softly gently as if
he’ll never stop
and i am wondering
when the pain will begin
his fingers over my eyes open
just enough for me to see
the curve of his ear through the crack of them
and i bite his bottom lip gentle enough
not to draw blood hard
enough to come back
and the gasp that comes with it
is delightful
slowly i run my hands up
the edges of his sides under
the soft fabric of his shirt and across
his nipples once twice three times
to make him gasp pull my hair
and lean into the confines of this kiss
as if i am the only thing in this world
that is capable to holding him up
i love you i mutter as the words stumble
off my lips in the free moments i have
to breathe his fingers digging into my hips
the pull of my jeans an anchor
that locks me to him as i slide my legs between his
and push him backwards onto the bed
before he can react
fast enough my legs around his hips
my crotch pressing down on his as i try
to steady my weight while
my fingers are in his hair as he pulls at me
scratches his way down my back
kisses my lips my neck in an all encompassing fever
our attempt to make
this moment last forever

Burning Red Oven

Psychiatrist and Patient

D: Ah *Checks chart* Lillian, have a seat.

P: You don’t have a couch?

D: Pardon?

p: *Looks around* A couch, you know, like the ones you see on TV, big, made of leather, generally black although sometimes they’re red *smile* that beautiful color. *Pause* All you have are these hard metal chairs. Not at all comfortable. *Sits down*

D: Err… I’m sorry about that. Now, can you tell me about you favorite color?

P: Why?

D: Color is a form of expression. Different shades mean different things depending on how dark or light they are.

P: What’s your favorite color Doctor?

D: Green. What’s yours?

P: Red.

D: *Scribbles something down* Why is that?

P: Because it’s beautiful. I like it when it dyes the fabric. People look good with it wrapped around them, especially the neck. It’s so pretty. *Sighs*

D: What about roses?

P: Roses?

D: Red roses, what do they mean to you? *Furiously writing*

P: Do you like them Doctor?

D: Roses, ah not really. I’m not that fond of flowers.

P: How come?

D: They remind me of my mother because she’d always place them in vases around the house. The smell was overwhelming when they started rotting.

P: My mother used to bake a lot.

D: Really. *Jots something down*

P: Yes, she’d forget about the cakes sometimes and would take them out of the oven hours later after the smoke alarm had gone off. Every now and then when I was bored, I’d dig my hands into what was left of the cake and tried to pull out the charred heart inside. It looked… wrong though.

D: How did it look wrong?

P: *Frowns* It was black, all crumbly as it came apart in my hands.

D: What did you think it should have looked like?

P: It should have been red and pulsing. It should have been alive, not dying.

D: * Writes something down* Tell me about your father.

P: He was big like a giant. Mother used to worship him whenever he came home from wherever he’d been.

D: What’s your impression of him?

P: He was grey because he was sad and didn’t know any better. He wasn’t red and that upset me.

D: Was your mother red?

P: No, she was black just like the cakes she made. I liked to watch her fall apart when the oven timer never went off. That’s when she started crying and the layers would cave in on top of each other.

D: Why did you want them to be red?

P: *Looks at him strangely* Because then I could give them my love. They didn’t deserve it when they were gray and black. That’s boring. What color were your parents Doctor?

D: Hmmm. I probably wanted them to be pink so I knew that they loved me and sometimes they were. More often they were grey though.

P: Why pink?

D: Because that’s the color that represents love for me. Why did you choose red?

P: *Frowns* I didn’t choose red, red chose me.

D: Can you elaborate? *Checks something off*

P: They weren’t red Doctor. They weren’t vibrant and I couldn’t see it on them.

D: Couldn’t see what?

P: They didn’t look beautiful when that color touched them. I used to have a pair of sunglasses with red lenses and when I looked though them, they would look dirty and twisted. They deserved their end, all broken and falling apart as the black began to fade with time.

D: Was there anyone who looked beautiful in red to you? *Writing madly*

P: Sean was beautiful in red.

D: Beautiful, not handsome you say?

P: Yes, beautiful.

D: Why did you think he looked beautiful in red?

P: It suited him. He looked alive.

D: Do you think he deserved his end?

P: What end?

D: His death. Do you think he deserved to die like that?

P: He’s not dead Doctor.

D: What makes you say that?

P: Because I can feel him inside me. *Places her hand on her stomach* I can feel his heart beating and hear the movement of the blood.

D: Lillian lets imagine. How would you feel if Sean was dead?

P: That’s not true though Doctor. I can see him you know and hear his voice. He says he loves me. I love him Doctor, I love him.

D: Let’s just imagine. Can you tell me why you love him Lillian?

P: *Yelling* Because he was red and deserved my love, not like my parents. The only time they ever looked beautiful was when they died. Red was all around them then and that was the first time I ever liked them.

D: And Sean was beautiful in red?

P: Yes, he was beautiful in red. He was beautiful Doctor. *gasping*

D: How was he beautiful? Can you explain some more?

P: When I watched him I could see that he was alive, not like my parents who were crumbling apart. I could see the blood beneath his skin, pulsing, moving. He was vibrant Doctor. I loved him and he loved me.

D: When was the first time he ever said he loved you?

P: *Smiles* It was behind the bleachers after school. Then he kissed me and when he moved his mouth away he had my lipstick on him. It looked cute on him.

D: What color was the lipstick?

P: It was red. I don’t wear any other color. That way when I kissed him he became mine.

D: What do you mean he became yours? *Writing madly*

P: Sean’s beautiful Doctor. I wanted to see him all in red. Every now and then we’d sneak into the art room and fool around with the paints.

D: *Frowns* Have you ever used any illegal substances?

P: Drugs? Doctor I don’t do drugs. I tried once and it messed up my ability to see the colors. So I stopped.

D: What’s your favorite taste Lillian?

P: Taste, not food?

D: Taste.

P: Red.

D: Red as in what? Juice, tomatoes, pasta sauce, raw meat, seafood?

P: Just red Doctor. *Shakes her head* It’s brilliant almost like drinking blood; you can taste life in it.

D: Have you ever drunk blood? Cut yourself on purpose?

P: Haven’t you ever licked a paper cut Doctor, to stop the bleeding?

D: Yes, do you get cut often?

P: Every now and then like everybody else. *smile*

D: Do you have any hobbies Lillian?

P: I like to paint.

D: What do you paint?

P: Whatever I feel like. *Shrugs*

D: You mentioned that Sean became yours. Can we go back to that?

P: Sure.

D: What did you mean by that? *Jots something down*

P: He became mine Doctor. Haven’t you ever wanted to own somebody, have them only watch you? Sean was like that. I could honestly taste some inner part of him from deep within me.

D: Could you feel that connection with your parents?

P: No, they weren’t red Doctor. I’ve said it before; they weren’t beautiful until they died.

D: If Sean died do you think he would be beautiful?

P: *Closes her eyes* Yes. I can see it. He’d be beautiful.

D: Can you describe it to me, how he’d die?

P: Gently. I wouldn’t want to hurt him because he doesn’t deserve that. Have you ever tried to break something open without ruining it, like wrapping paper?

D: Yes, I used to do that with all my presents at birthdays and Christmas.

P: Me too.

D: Sean would look like that then?

P: Yes. There’d be red all around him on the ground, running through his hair and clothes. Beautiful, it’s absolutely beautiful.

D: Would you be happy if Sean died Lillian?

P: Maybe. I don’t know.

D: Why is that?

P: Because then he’d be totally mine. I would be the only person to love him, to hold him, to kiss him. He’d be mine and mine alone. I might be lonely though, I might get lonely.

D: Why do you feel that he needs to be yours?

P: He’s red Doctor. He’s the only one who deserves my love.

D: Do you think you’d have the strength to kill him?

P: Yes.

D: Where would it be?

P: In the art room. We used to open up the paints and color each other. He’d paint me green and I’d use up all the shades of red. He looked really good like that.

D: What would you use?

P: *Slowly* One of the knives for sharpening pencils. A quick cut to the wrist and then the red would begin to flow. From there I’d be able to paint him into my own image of desire. He’s beautiful in red Doctor.

D: I know. *Stands up* Thank you for talking to me today Lillian.

P: *Smiles* You know Doctor; you might look good in red as well. Sean looked beautiful the last time I saw him. I can imagine you looking just like that. Vibrant and completely mine.

Flower Girl

In all the moments
of every hour when our
clocks were crushed together
until they beat collectively
within the gears of time forever,
I only remember the hue
of your skin,
white earth as the ever encroaching
garden burst into full bloom
and shredded its petals down, out
across your cheeks,
flooded your lips and blew
the winds of summer fever
down beneath the surface of
your eyes.
I can only breathe back the scents of
the sole time you let yourself
blossom, flower, grow heavy
while fruit ripened upon the vine
and turned to seed,
despite the fact that these memories
can't spread your taste out upon
my tongue, ease my longing for your flavor,
as I lean forward with
the intent to kiss you.
For I know, in all
the rational content of summer madness,
it's foolish to fall in love with
an annual girl.

Find You

I have come back to you
and I am sorry it came to this
before I returned,
his name still a bruise upon my lips,
my smile weak and wavering, my fingers
stained red with shame
as the blood oozes out from under
the corners of my nails.
I have turned to you and your desire,
my body open as I spread myself wide,
heart thudding
as you turn off the ignition of the car,
lean over the console and kiss
me hard back into my seat,
the combined heat of our breath
leaving a delicate fog that spreads
across the panes of the car windows,
as I finally allow you to take me over
the edge and swallow me whole
beneath you.
I find you in the back roads,
leaning against the stop sign
of an empty four-way stop,
arms bare beneath the pale sun and boots
muddied by the rain of late November,
grinning with a promise of a secret
and a bite, something more
each and every time I come to you.
Now, as the days peel back slowly,
I find nothing else matters but this,
my body and soul unraveling, limp
and saturated with your scent,
your mark wrapped around the angles
of my skin, the kisses trailing
up under the fabric of my sleeves,
the bite of your teeth imprinted beneath the collar
of my shirt, your ownership of me hidden
from the public's eyes.
I have finally given myself to you
in hopes that you can fix me
now that he is gone.