speechless

The bus collects us like trinkets off the street. We roll on and off, coated with fall leaves and shaky bones and the old, crucial dust that identifies historical things. We are ancient here—together in this lapse of memory. The bus ride is never kind without you.

The trail blurs by in a cacophony of breezing bus noise: the rush of the tires rounding the pavement, the fall leaves we left behind crunching beneath the rubber. There are probably the ruins of a spiderweb in your hair. The fall leaves had been inviting, and your young, wide smile elicits excitement in me I can’t, I can’t, I can’t explain. There is a link between us that is tighter than a bond of blood. Though we’ve made that pact as well.

If I blink, I can see us here again, almost like it were yesterday, the crisp crunch of the fall leaves close in my ears.

Your laughter was a line of adrenaline. Shot straight into my veins. I straightened like I’d been struck by lightning, like your rippling electricity was dancing in my bones. We liked the lightning, you and I. We watched it from the rooftops.

My mother liked our friendship. She said we had a boyish charm. She said I should be careful not to lose a friend like you. So I cradled our link like a spider in my hands.

The bus was white and yellow, and so fast that it was rare to catch. You jumped off the edge and you landed on the curb and I followed, like I always will. If I blink, I can see us there again, and again, and again. Chasing after the bus, or laughing in the leaves, bodies aching with the clutch the autumn chill had on our ribs. Outside, a new snow winks at the horizon.

Flurries falling from the sky. Though my eyes have aged, I see you the same, somehow, even in this new light.

A line of lightning twinkles gloriously above your head. We like the lightning. Silent and fast and sky-brightening. The shepherd of the storm clouds.

You, in the driveway, eyes dark. Where mine have moved to fine lines and past stresses, yours carry something deeper, something that’s grown. You don’t want to come inside. I’ve done something, you say. We can’t be friends anymore. If I blink, I am chasing you across a field of vibrant leaves. I am calling your name, and you laugh and race onward. If I blink, there is no animosity between us, and we are still friends and nothing has changed and the autumn glow of the world remains in all its warm, fire colours. But the seasons have shifted and there is lightning in the sky, rare and fast and white.

You have shifted, faster than those very bolts we used to marvel at. Now you are the marvel. I watch you, awe-struck, still reeling from the boy you were, that we were, the one that jumped from bus ledges and sought out spiderwebs, the one who toppled as he climbed the roof to sit by my side, who drew blood with a finger prick and held my hand, who promised, promised, promised we would always be friends.

I hold on to the illusion that I’ve done nothing wrong. That nothing has changed between us. If I blink, your hardened eyes look almost youthful again, the grim line of your stare replaced with watery innocence, your hurt whimsied away with childlike tears, the dark scowl on your mouth suddenly trembling. You hide from me these days, but I see you.

We are older, with age in our skin and age in our blood. The we that once was collects dust by the bus stop. Molds with the tree leaves into ashes and dirt. In one blink, everything was in front of me, and now, you walk away.

The hurt in your eyes deepens, brows drawing together. You can’t understand my ignorance, or maybe you do. Maybe that is why you walk away. Leaves crunching beneath your boots. A storm begins above us, but there is no use for any more rain.

And I am calling your name, chasing you once more. But you can’t, you can’t, you can’t hear me. I’ve known you for years, and yet, in this instant, watching you go elicits an old, rooftop feeling. The one we’d get, leaning against each other, watching the light crackle across the sky. Maybe we were a light like that, our friendship stamped into a quick moment in time. White and yellow.

Electric. So fast that it was rare to catch. x

WORDS by YUMNA AHMAD ART by RACHEL OSEIDA