Do You?

Do You?

The rocky shore is pulling me North like a magnet. With each step I find myself closer to where my subconscious leading me, but further away from home. It doesn’t bother me. The air is wet inside my nostrils and pungent on my skin and teeth.
The water, a giant pool of melted chrome, reflects the overcast skies in a calm metallic splendor. I tilt my chin downward and let my eyes roll forward like marbles toward my reflection. It quivers as I pause to stare for a moment at my face floating like a pool of luminescent oil on the surface.
A tender breeze slips between my legs and the fabric of my dress rustles and clings to my skin. I feel numb in all the wrong places. I rub my palms down my thighs and wet my lips as the breeze has wiped them dry.
I continue to step gingerly, placing my feet on the flattest rocks to avoid slipping and being swallowed by the thick, quiet hunger of the water. I can’t stop seeing the face I’ve missed for a decade, a face that I can’t even remember. Why do I see your face? Your voice is non-existent, the feeling of your skin pressed warm and leathered against mine is a sense of the intangible, but your face prevails before my mind’s eye.
You’re probably sleeping now, blissfully unaware of the fact that I’ve failed in escaping any further than I did ten years ago, and what a long ten years it has been. Every minute has stretched thinner like the bubble gum clenched between Liza’s teeth as she pulls it out past her pink lips and wraps it sweetly around her forefinger.
She misses you, too, even though she never tells me so. I can see the hollow echo of you in her cold blue eyes, secretly wishing you’d come back to replace a light bulb on the basement ceiling or give her a piggy-back ride as you wheel the garbage can down to the curb. She wishes you’d kiss her hair and call her lovely so she has a warm, syrupy name to wrap herself in when she goes up to bed.
My foot is suddenly sucked into the darkness between two rocks and I tip backwards. The water claps shut over my body and I feel a mound of bubbles scuttle out from my behind my ears to explode onto the surface.
I lay still for a minute before the air inside my lungs pulls my chest to the sky. I swiftly sit up and grab two rocks on either side of me to steady myself and float between them, and I scan the nearby shoreline. Did you see that?
I can feel the droplets of lake water absorb the heat of my blushing skin and carry it down my cheeks. My hair hangs sopping against my temples and the breeze inflates into a stronger wind. Goose bumps crawl across my naked arms and I hug my churning stomach before carefully getting to my feet. Liza will be awake soon, wanting oatmeal with raisins for breakfast while she waits for me to get the coffee on before we fill the first hour of the morning with a round Monopoly.
Every time I pass Boardwalk I think of you and that one and only time we played the game together. My first monopoly was the most expensive on the board, and in faux despair you pinned me to the oriental carpet beneath the coffee table and peppered my neck with kisses until I agreed to trade. My mother nearly killed me the next day when she saw the hickies.
Do you ever think of me like this? Do you think of me whenever you see a glimpse of something that causes a flicker in your brain? Something that causes a light to turn on inside a closet you’ve had locked tight since I left? A light that turns on even though you clenched the bulb until it burst in your bleeding fist?
Maybe when I get back home you’ll be there, waiting for me.