Abigail M. Schilling

We crashed. You. Me. Us. Crashing. That's how it always was anyway. I crashed into you and you into me and we would swim in the wreckage until we did it again.

I remember the first time I realized I loved you. We were sitting on that swing at the top of the hill under the tree. We were quiet for so long because you had crashed and I had crashed and for once it wasn't into each other and it wasn't together but there we were, on the swing at the top of the hill under the tree. And the wreckage was all around but below, not at the top of the hill.

I was there first. I had crashed first also, months earlier I had crashed and fallen, and I sat in the wreckage alone until you joined me. I saw you falling also, we were both always falling except you never acknowledged the falling even though I think you still knew it happened. (I always knew it happened. That made it worse. I could never stop it.)

I climbed up the hill because I knew that I would need to be up so you would have somewhere to go. And then I waited. I waited for you to crash and I watched you crash and I waited. It was hard to watch you fall, it was hard to watch you crash, and I couldn't look away because I felt that I could somehow betray you by averting my eyes.

When you were done and fallen and surrounded by wreckage you looked up at the tree at the top of the hill and you climbed. I was sitting on the swing, my arms crossed over holding my elbows, my ankles crossed and my heels softly kicking the dirt and I swung back and forth. I didn't stop the swinging and you didn't sit down next to me.

You collapsed into the dirt at my feet. You filled the dusty crescent formed by many feet swinging and relaxing on your back you stretched your arms back over your head and grasped your elbows.

We didn't say anything. I rocked, my toes hitting your calves every other beat, and you were sighing so often you might as well have been sighing on the off beat. After a while I stopped and uncrossed my ankles and uncrossed my arms and sat up straight and looked at you.

And there we were, in the middle of wreckage, catching our breath on an island, quiet.

"I'm sorry."

You reached out your arm and I grabbed your elbow and you got up and stretched, looking down the hill. And then you sat next to me on the swing and we leaned until it was dark.

In that silence, when you were either thinking of everything or trying your best to think of nothing, I was thinking of everything. And I remember the feeling so distinctly because I realized I had never felt it before. And it hurt so much because I loved you and I loved you so much because it hurt.

We talked. We talked about the pain of crashing and the wreckage and the depth of something infinite. And then we sat some more, leaning, and sighing, and watching and waiting. When it got too cold to sit under the tree any longer, we got up and you brushed the dirt from your legs and I brushed the dirt from your back and we climbed back down the hill.