If a girl were to break up with
me,
or vice-versa
I would prefer it to be either:
1) on good terms; we would kiss or and hug for one last time
and stay as
friends; or 2) on bad terms; she would spit on me, slap
me, or kick the gears of
my
masculinity and tell me
that she never wants to see my pathetic
being ever again,
and
I would cry for
probably three weeks while listening
to “Boston” by Augustana, gain a little weight, and move on.
That’s normal.
Normal is ideal.
Three months have passed since she
left
me. I don’t feel
bad about it.
I don’t feel
good either; it was the oddest of farewells.
“Meet me at the Vantage Point at 8,” she said; it’s a
bench outside of my apartment.
It gave us a good view of the city; we would watch the people,
small as ants, wander around the labyrinth of streets, lampposts, signs, and homes.
What we enjoyed the best was the annual
Balloon Festival;
we would have picnics and
enjoy watching
the hot air balloons
float into the sky
one by one, converging into a massive cloud of
psychedelia.
She was late.
“How do I
look?” she asked out of the
blue. “Like a
freak. Beautiful.”
Beautiful. Indeed,
she
was with her newly-curled
auburn hair
and her pink blouse.
I would go so far and sarcastically say that she is
‘sublime’, but I never
Understood as to why she dragged a hot air balloon with
her.
She asked me to help tie the suspension cables of the balloon to her arms and legs.
(Like a freak. Beautiful.)
She
said that it was
time for her to say goodbye,
forever. “A
last kiss and an embrace are not enough to tell me I’m free. I
want to fly.”
Problem: she was missing a wicker basket to stay in, and the burners to inflate it, and the sufficient supply
of propane tanks to keep it afloat.
She didn’t need them.
“Freedom is when you
feel
nothing below your feet,” she said.
“Goodbye, my friend.”
Goodbye, my friend.
“Hold up the balloon’s skirt over my head,
please?”
“What the fuck? Sure.”
From her purse,
she took lighter fluid
and doused her
head with it. From her pocket,
a box of matches.
She
lit one, and held it up to her
face. Her facial conflagration inflated the balloon and up she went.
As she drifted farther across
the firmament,
she waved goodbye. “Goodbye, friend.”
Friend. Ex-girlfriend.
Still a friend. Girl friend.
Girl. Friend.
The space is infinite. And it shall forever be.
Is she alive? I don’t know. But if
she
is,
would she still
have a face for me to recognize, and
for her to recognize me?
___________________________________
Matt Olivares is a senior BFA Creative Writing and AB English Literature major. He was a fellow for fiction in English for the 18th Ateneo Heights Writers Workshop. He likes destroying the concept of genre by combining two or all of them in some of his works. He is currently planning and writing ten strange tales, and a collection of ekphrastic poetry on post-rock songs.
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