Don’t you want to see us win? Don’t you want to peel back the chipped paint one day until it reveals our name, written in Sharpie, softened by memory and age, from the time we replaced the floorboards? Don’t you want the strength to seep into our bones, like your hair dye that still hasn’t washed out (and maybe it shouldn’t? Maybe it permanently altered something in your chemistry, when my fingers combed red slop through dark gold, breaking bonds and perhaps forging them, as well). Don’t you want to hold my hand as we jump into the pool and feel how tightly I squeeze your palm, not just out of fear but something greater?
Don’t you think we have a chance? A chance at normality, maybe. I swear I can love you seven times more to make up for every time you wanted to punch to the mirror. Well, I got news for you. We can make it through the race. I’ll clip your number to your jersey (#25, for good luck) and you can make sure my laces are tied so I don’t trip like last autumn. Even if we’re the last ones out of the woods we’ll hold our interlinked hands above our heads and yell in the language of victory (it sounds like the exhale of our fogged breath in the cold, before the horn goes off and our bodies take over). They’ll be so surprised they’ll hand us bottled water and we’ll pour it over our faces to cool our sizzling skin and I’ll say, See, I told you. I told you we could do it. I’ll press two fingers to the pulse on your neck and feel its fluttering drumbeat, chanting Yes Yes Yes like the last butterfly to escape chrysalis, like the egg they said would never hatch until one day a quivering soft feather of a thing pecked through flimsy shell to reveal its fragility. When the new people living in our old house lift the floorboards, they’ll see we’ve carved the archives of our future. When your roots regrow, you won’t forget the feeling of my hands in your hair. When we fall beneath the water’s surface, we’ll have faced our fear of diving headfirst. That’s how we’ll win.
