space

I'd only been half listening at first, thinking of what to say.  It had to be good.

The end of her answering machine message hit me squarely in the face like a lead pipe.  I wish it would've left a charcoal mark across my nose and cheekbones.  I'd be left with something to remember her by.

"Funny thing about space...how we use it, how we take it up, fill it.  How we invade it when it isn't ours; how one assumes the space next to me is his when it truly is not.  Have a nice girlfriend."

[beep]... ... ...

I wanted to fall to my knees for a second time that day-be enveloped by the crowd so I could really feel...alone.

A few short, short hours ago, stunned by her sudden aloofness, I'd gotten on my knees in absolute desperation, begging her to marry me as if the answer had ever supposed to be anything anything but yes.

I stared at the front of her jeans blankly from behind my eyes, in that space on my knees, unable to tear my eyes from her smooth blue thigh fronts and the seam that overlapped the zipper.

This space had been mine, and I had not taken it for granted.

She was talking evenly, coldly.  After she'd finished, she moved to the side, brushing past me as a stranger, taking her scent from my space.

I did not look back.

I couldn't utter the thick, heavy scream that molested the back of my dry throat.

and my knees on the cement
and heat burning through jeans
and I could not move from there for what seemed like hours