DAY 14 29/03-18

You know, there is memories that we always want to remind ourselves of occasionally, memories that were good but isn't necessarily making you happy thinking about them.

In my case, it leaves me longing for something I know I will never experience again. It's a good fragment in all the bad, a little part of a picture you need to see completely to understand what you're looking at. I do wrong in choosing to only look at that little fragment, because I know that when I step back to take a look at the whole picture I will get disappointed.

It's a fragment that shows me and dad, eating breakfast. It was one of those very few days we actually sat together, and dad's mood was good enough that he chose not to sink down in our frayed gray couch in the living room, zapping to the all too familiar channel with a bowl of oat-flakes in his hand because, apperantly, he had some sense left in him and wanted to keep things healthy for the two of us. The flakes, though, was as tasteless as he could be, but I kept quiet and ate them.

It was one of those few days where our conversation lasted for more than just two minutes, but the problem with those conversations was that I always wanted them to last even longer when they ended. I would always try to prolong them, if that meant just saying nonsense, but after a while dad would just give me that tiring smile, ending any further conversation, before he left to go to the living room again, leaving reality over to me again. I alway had to take it, even if I didn't want to.

° ° °

The only time I ever saw Shiro leaving his breakfast untouched and open on the kitchen table was when he had somehow managed to screw up his schedule and almost came late for work. But this is not the case now; I know he locked himself up in his room for the day, calling himself in sick. Someone else would have probably told him he was overreacting, but I know what a touchy subject Adam is, and the memory of him must have been the final straw pulled for Shiro. I know he completely broke down yesterday, and today he's hiding so I won't see him break. We are similar in many ways, after all.

I wrap his breakfast in foil and place it back in the fridge, not in the mood to fix breakfast for myself. Instead I pull out the little paper from my pocket again, examining it. I turn it in my hand, as if a new angle could give me different answers. The only answers this paper is giving me is an address.

Mesa Cemetery
Good luck :{)

Mesa. He's buried all the way in Mesa. It hurts in my head to think about it. To think that's he's actually buried. He's not alive anymore. It hurts because the thoughts is so big, too. It's big and foreign and it makes me scared. This whole morning I have sat in my room and let myself drown in the imaginary water. Maybe it was just an illusion that Lance could reach for me and pull me up. Or maybe it's just the fact that he's not here with me, and I have no lifebuoy to cling onto.

My mind overflows with water when I walk to one of our drawers, pulling out a pack of post it notes, tearing one away from the stack. With shaky fingers, I write down a simple sentence on it, before sticking it on the middle of the kitchen table. I turn around to leave and get changed.

Gone to get my closure. Breakfast is in the fridge.

° ° °

I do have a driving license, believe it or not, and I have heard multiple times that I'm very good at driving. I just don't have my own car though, because it's not like I need it. I rarely leave the house anyways, and the school isn't so far from me, so I can just take the bus; four stops later and I'm already there. That, and Shiro often drives me wherever I need to be, anyways. Even if I rarely drive our car, I'm fast to catch up on it. I only have to drive out of our block and it already feels like I'm driving everyday.

I grip the steering wheel and let my hands acclimate with the feeling of holding it. The leather under my wingers feels perfect. The radio is on a low volume and the slight bobbing of the car puts my thoughts into ease. I turned on the GPS too, typed in my destination and rely on it to give me the right directions.

"Take the next exit to the right", the recorded female voice tells me. I do as she says. The road is dry and cracked like the rest of Arizona, and the heat today is as unbearable like all the other days. It yers dust all around the car when I turn to the left, this road apperently veering me off to Mesa. My grip hardens.

I look around the place I drive into; abandoned, crusty trains, scrawled sheds and houses, unfinished road works and eroded sign poiting me to different motels and restaurant. I follow the sign that points me further into Mesa, relying on that and the female voice telling me I'm nearing my destination. Every sound around me turns distant. The noise around me slowly gets quieter, until it somehow manages to blend in with the pulse in my ears. It does that every time I drive, and it's not necessarily bad. Not at all, actually.

My body buzzes with adrenalin when I drive further into the city, seeing how more houses starts to appear. I stop at a red light but nobody is really here, so I could have continued driving if I wanted to. But right now I just need to pause a little and gather my thoughts into one place, even if it may seem impossible.

"Keep left", the female voice says all too late. I turn her off because I already know that I'm arriving soon. I gulp when the traffic light goes green, the car yanking forward when I press the pedal too hard. Almost there.

° ° °

Mesa Cemetery looks exactly like I imagined a cemetery to look. Not like I do imagine it often; I try not to think about dead people often, thank you very much.

The rusty fence creaks loudly when I push it open. Several dead leafs crunches under my footsteps when I step in. Why does the atmosphere have to drop onto such a sad level just as I step into the cemetery? This situation is already sad as it is. It's like the world knows what I'm doing, and automatically makes everything around me look depressing. It doesn't help that the sun is desperately trying to paint the world with happiness, or the bright houses down the road; everything turns into the true colors around me. Gloomy colors. Colors only I see.

My heart is already telling me to go home, even if I didn't even start anything yet. It's only now that it begins.

It's completely empty in life here; only an old man walking further away, sweat spots on his shirt as he's slowly walking down the path looking around him like this is a beautiful garden. I wonder who the hell signs up willingly to just take a relaxing walk in a cemetery. There is nothing beautiful about this, nothing to enjoy seeing.

I pull off my gloves to just do something, deciding to place them in my pocket. My hands are dropping sweat and my heart is screaming in my chest. Fuck, I really don't want to do this. I don't understand why I even came here. I ask myself what I would get out of this; probably nothing more than just a really bad heartache and more questions prodding my head.

I look up, looking at an angel statue in the middle of the cemetery. She's not looking at me but it still feels like she does. That whenever I move, her eyes follows. It sends chills through my body and I quickly look away, trailing my eyes over all the stones instead. As if that is better. I let myself read all their names, littering every stone, their status and death date. I see a bouquet of flowers that needs to be replaced, randomn things that probably meant a lot to the person that passed away. I look down at my hands, realizing I didn't bring anything with me. Not like it was my duty to do so, but my hands still feel awfully empty. The few years I spent with my dad wasn't enough time to make me know very much about him, but still I feel like I know everything about him. Or, at least the most important; that if he could, he would want to be a fighter pilot, instead of a firefighter. If I was sentimental enough, I would have brought a little fighter plane toy or something with me to lay on his grave. No, it has nothing to do with sentimental or not. It's all about relationship; I spent most of my life without my dad. He left me. He doesn't deserve any of my grieve. He doesn't deserve a fighter plane toy. He doesn't deserve any of that.

I still feel the angel's look in my neck, but I don't look back. Shouldn't angels be assuring? Friendly? Right now I just feel utterly bared and frightened. I let my eyes roam over the stones instead, scanning every name, every death cause, feeling my lungs empty on air every second. Soon I'm not even breathing at all.

Every little good fragment flickers before my eyes, narrowing to just one thing. Every long lasting conversation we had, the cold water he poured over my head in the shower, the videos of fighter planes soaring through the sky, leads to this. To that stone. With his name. In Mesa Cemetery. Right in front of me.

"Hey kid", dad once told me when I sat on the floor in the living room and colored a little alien in a color book I got from Pizza Hut when we ate there about a week ago. I looked up, surprised over the softness in his voice. Dad was slouched in the cough, remote sitting loose in his hand. "Did you know that you could bend the wings of an airplane how much you want, and it would still fly fine?"

I perked up on this, sitting up straighter, shaking my head because I didn't know, and I was happy to receive such an interesting fact.

"Really?" I asked, because as an eight year old, I really wanted that to be true.

"It's true", he said, sitting up properly, seeming happy that I was taking an interest in the subject. It's not like I was faking my interest just to get him to talk to me, I actually found it entertaining to hear fun facts about planes and such.

"Hey", dad said. "You want to watch a Maserati race a fighter plane? I can show you if you want to."

I nodded eagerly, once again approving of dad's ideas he offered me. Standing up, I stood up, sitting down beside him in the couch, leaving a generous amount of space between us, because I didn't want to push my limits. But my heart swelled in happiness when he moved closer, picking up his phone from beside him, opening up the video on YouTube, which he had seemed to watch countless of times. I watched that clip three times that day, and dad seemed filled with delight every time I asked him to replay it. I remember wondering if he saw himself in me again, in this little form being me. I wonder what he thought of me then.

And I look down now, at his name on the plain smooth stone, a fire fighter hat laying on his grave, thinking that he will never fulfill his dream. He started off as a fire fighter, and ended as one. Nothing more than that. My throat knot itself, like it's normal if I cry now, but I can't. I can't do anything else than just stare at it, like the majority of my brain still don't get it. I don't know if it refuses to believe it, or if it's too slow to do it.

"Funny, huh?" I hear from beside me, and I jump, whipping my head to the right. There stands a tall man, tall enough to make me feel tiny, and he just has that natural grumpy face. His nose is straight, eyes hard. His hair is thin on the top of his head, but long, braided into a long braid over his shoulder. He has his hands behind his back, his body consisting of only muscles. I would have felt a little scared if it wasn't that I am completely hollow inside, emptied on any feeling. "Funny how a person is alive one second, and gone the next."

His voice is deep, very deep. But I feel nothing. I look down at the stone again and my voice comes out flatly when I speak. "Not in my case. My dad was gone a long time ago."

I look up at the man again and his face shows no sympathy whatsoever. It's completely expressionless. "Your dad, I see. I'm deeply sorry for your loss."

"Thank you", I say for no reason at all. It should be feeling strange that this randomn man is talking to me in a grave yard but it doesn't. He could be carrying an axe for all I know, but it doesn't bother me. Nothing does in this moment. I'm back in this state again. The denial state. Feeling so much it starts to feel like I feel nothing. All possible feelings mixing into something too much for me to handle. It's just like when you keep your hands in extremely hot water; after a while, it would be so hot it felt like extremely cold. I'm losing my grip onto differences again. Everything is the same to me.

"My colleague rerecently passed away", the man suddenly says, as if I asked. Before he can receive any sympathy, he continues. "This is the first time I visit his grave. I only visit the everyone one time. I rarely come here."

His face stays the same when he talks, and how hard I try, I still can't break through the stone hard expression on his face. There is nothing else hidden behind it.

"Why", I find myself asking, my voice as expressionless as his face.

"I come to get my closure. I belive it only takes one time to do so. After that, I let go. I don't let myself dwell on it." He speaks like someone in his life days everyday.

Before I have time to react, he turns around and leaves, the dead leafs crushing and braking under his footsteps. It gets quiet again, my thoughts speaking louder than anything around me. I look down at his name again, at his death date. Three years ago, just like Coran told me.

Maybe I can be just like that man that just talked to me; releasing my loose grip onto the only sanity and feelings I have left.

° ° °

The air stands completely still when I step out of the car, slowly, because suddenly all my body parts got sore.
My throat hurts, my eyes are twitching, but I don't understand why. The sun is shining as brightly as when I first left, if not even brighter. This weather just doesn't match this situation.

"Keith! Oh thank God that you're here", I hear from in front of me. Like in slowmotion, I look up, just as Lance scurries over to me, beach ball in his hands. He's suddenly standing right on front of me and is flashing me a big smile. My face doesn't move. "Please don't send me away again", he jokes like it's okay to joke about that moment now. He holds the ball in front of me, urging me to take it. "I came to return this. But I didn't want to go up to you, since... you know... something must have happened to Shiro yesterday."

I take the ball without a word. It feels heavy in my hands, even if it weighs nothing at all. It's like all my thoughts got placed into this sphere. I hold onto it dearly, because it's fragile, and if I dropped it, all my thoughts would be all over the place. I don't want to know what would happen to me then.

"Hey Keith, are you okay? Did something happen? Where were you, anyways?"

Great. My silence got him concerned. It still feels like my throat is one big knot, so I would want to keep quiet a decade more.

"I..." I clear my throat, grimacing when the pain increases. Am I getting a cold? Is that what's going on? Lance is looking at me like he's trying to figure out what's going on with me. I have no filter in my mouth, and I have no care inside me, so I tell him the truth. "I visited my father's... grave today."

Lance face drops, and he goes pale. I watch as his face switches in emotions. His eyebrows wrench upwards, and it's like the corner of his eyes turns downwards. He reaches for me, like he did before; he's standing close enough to do it. I stand still again, calculating promises in just his movements. His hands touches my shoulders, and I see that he's saying something to me, but I can't hear it. My ears are prompted with the rapid rhythm of my pulse. It's rapid but it's a rhythm, one that I wouldn't want to listen to if I had the chance to choose.

He's still saying things to me, searching into my eyes for any sign of life. I can't hear what he's saying but I still grip his shirt, my fingers quivering against the fabric, like he would turn to sand in my hands any second. I pull him with me before the warm wind can blow him away, and we stumble into the apartment, taking every step in the stairs with reason, like every step mattered. Like something mattered.

We make it up to our floor, and I think Lance stopped talking now. I fumble for my keys, holding onto the ball at the same time. I think I left my heart outside, because it feels empty in my chest. I open the door and I see Shiro, standing in the hallway, looking like he was ready to scold me, but then he sees Lance and he sees my face and he looks at me in a completely different away. I examine his face; it's red, but still having a green shade to it. His eyes are puffy, like he silently cried this whole morning in his room. It still seems very strange to me; I never took Shiro to be the crying guy. Maybe that's a consequence for the way he painted himself up in. He painted himself up in a way that would make people think that he never break. Every facade has at least one consequence. There not a single one that comes flawless. Once you paint it up, you get addicted to that facade. You try not to drop it, because you don't want people to see the cracks behind.

No one is saying anything. There is no words needed. We look at each other and Shiro nods. I see how he understands. His eyes tells me to do what I need to do. I still have a death grip on Lance's t-shirt. It soothes me that he hasn't withered away yet. I pull him to my room, where everything is still, where there is no wind to blow him away. The sound of the door closing is a switch in my head. Lance isn't saying anything, or maybe I still can't hear him.

I drop the beach ball and I can hear it shatter trough the silence. Every little thought stored inside flies around my room, corrupting all the space given. I hear them all around me, and it makes me insane. I let go of Lance and I step back, tugging at my hair like I'm really going crazy. I feel my eyes dilating, not knowing what to focus on. My mouth is opening and closing, resembling a fish. I have too many things said and too many things unsaid. Every thought is messing with me.

"Keith..." His voice cuts through all the bad things. My breathing is rapid when he grips my shoulders. "Keith, calm down. You're breathing too fast."

So I wasn't the only one noticing. And my heart is pumping fast, too. A hurricane is taking place in my body and I have no idea where it came from. It stirs all my emotions into a disaster.

"Keith." His arms snakes around me in a familiar and comforting manner. They keep me in check, they provide the little sanity I dropped. "Stop shaking, just cry. It's okay to cry."

The simplicity in his voice, in his embrace, his persona just not judging me in this moment... I break. Right here in his arms. I break into a shaking and crying mess. I go full on sobbing, so loudly and violently it scares me. It's a open and ugly cry, making me hiccup and whimper against his shoulder. I soak his cloth with a whole fountain. The last time I was shaking this fiercely must have been when I first realized dad was gone.

It's so ironic. Now I'm crying for the exact same reason. Dad is gone. I just realized it. He won't come back. I'm a little kid again, a question mark to the world, sobbing because I still don't know all the answer. My heart shatters, builds itself up and shatters again. It hurts. So fucking much. It's better to not feel anything at all.

So, it just stopped there; the memories of him stopped when I was ten. There is no way I can create new ones. I had this little hope before that I still could. Someday. That he would miraculously appear again. That was before I found out that it's impossible. Before I realized that he would never appear again. Maybe that little hope is what kept me going. It was barely there, very much not noticeable, but it was there. Among all the hate that I tried to store up against him. All the time in the orphanage, when Shiro first adopted me, I really hated him. I want to do it now too. I want to be unaffected by his absence. But heck, I just can't. It's as impossible as his appearance. The only thing inside me right now is pure, honest sadness.

"W-why..." I try to speak but the sobs is hard to control now. They come out so rapidly it sends my tongue into a non-functional crisis. "Why the f-fuck am I... c-crying...?" I know damn well why I am, but it still somehow still confuses me. Every little sob goes through my whole body, making me quiver against him. His arms are the only thing keeping me from dropping flat on the floor.

"Because you can", Lance whispers in my ear. He strokes my hair, pulling me closer to him. Our chests are pressed together, hearts beating against each other, sending beats to one another.

It makes me cry harder. Tears showing no sign of ever stopping falling. It feels like an endless bawl. I could stand in Lance's arm and break forever, for all I know.

"Keith, stop breathing so harshly, you might be putting your lungs in danger", he worridely mumbles in my hair. His reminder makes me realize the pain that appeared in my chest. It's not healthy for me to cry. Isn't crying supposed to make it easier for you? To take the pressure away? Right now it just feels like it's putting more strain upon me. Maybe that's just because I'm not used to this. All of this.

I feel myself moving, and I let Lance pull me towards my bed, carefully laying me down, sinking down beside me, never letting go of me. His face hovers over me, before it comes closer. Very close. I feel it before I have time to register it. Something astonishingly soft against my forehead. Warm, too. It's not his fingers; they are swiftly wiping away my tears that are continuously falling. It's his lips, lingering on my skin for a lifetime. He's kissing my forehead, sending pledges with only his touches. He's breaking any barrier I could have set up around me. His soft kiss is the sledge hammer to the wall, breaking his way through. I shiver, fold and unfold.

"I'm going to stay with you tonight", he says in a dull and subdued voice when he pulls slightly back, my skin aching for more of his lips. I tug at his t-shirt, trying to yank him closer to me. I need him closer to me. I need his lips that makes me hot all over again. Lance cups my cheek, and I tilt my head into his grasp, closing my eyes, seeing Lance and only Lance behind my eyelids. I see him in different styles, in the best ones.

"I won't leave you", he whispers. A promise. For me.

Good.

° ° °

Every fragment has its own little blemish. Somewhere. Maybe if you turn it around. Examine the back of it. Find the answer written somewhere.

° ° °

Yup, you guess it. I went to Google Maps and searched for a cemetery in Arizona 🤷🏻‍♀️