A lifetime passed before Ginny came back from the kitchen. Maybe not a lifetime, but long enough that I had learned the lights above the fireplace flicker every 4 seconds, but you have to be focus to notice it. But I wasn't focused, I'd flipped through the pile of books beside her bed three times over. I kept going back to the Bible on top of the stack, still in perfect condition—not even a crack in the spine. It was exactly the same as the day Great Fields tied a ribbon around it and told Ginny she hoped she'd do what's right. That sentence must have been born from our friendship because there wasn't a day in Ginny's life she hadn't done what was right.

She willingly went to church on Sundays and never stayed out past midnight, even after I'd talked her mom into extending her weekend curfew—on the promise that we'd clean the dishes every week after church that summer. Ginny never cashed in on the curfew, but she'd still polish the forks and knives while I'd draw in the church bulletin on the counter.

The bedroom door creaked open and Ginny whispered, "it would be so much easier if you carried anything up here. I almost broke the bottle twice."

"Why'd you bring that one? I put the one from last week in your drawer."

"What drawer?" Her eyes got wide as she sat on the floor and set out the bottle and cups.

"Your sock drawer. And the bottle you have is filled with water."

"Why would you do that?" Ginny quietly panicked, "My mom will kill me!"

So overdramatic. "Oh please, she hasn't looked in that cabinet in the entire time I've known her."

Ginny rubbed her temple, "She has been on me for weeks. You have to tell me if you hide liquor in my room, unless you want me to be grounded for the rest of my life."

"If you get grounded, I'll climb the walls like Romeo." I stood up off her bed, "What light through the window breaks? Ginny is the sun!"

She laughed and pulled at my ankle, "Keep your voice down!"

I crouched down and held her giggling face. "Oh, give me my Ginny! And when I die take her and-and give her whiskey and love and courage and-and I don't know! I never finished the damn play!"

She slowly clapped, still quietly giggling, "That was terrible. You are terrible and I think maybe you shouldn't have anymore to drink."

"I only had three beers at Jackson's! You made us leave before he got into his dad's cabinet."

"Okay, then you may have one more drink and then I'll read you Romeo and Juliet until you fall asleep."

"Sounds good to me." I changed out the bottle and crouched to the floor.

"What were you reading?" Ginny asked while I poured vodka into her cup.

"Hmm?"

"The book you were reading when I came in, which one was it?"

"Just that old Bible that Great Fields gave you."

Ginny hummed, eyes locked on the rim of her cup.

"Why do you keep it on your nightstand if you never read it?"

"I do read it." She said quickly. "It's not old." She lifted her cup to her mouth.

"Yeah, it's actually very nice. Great Fields does like the finer things." I took a swig.

"No, she doesn't," Ginny mumbled into her cup, not taking anything into her mouth.

"What'd you say?" I mumbled into mine.

"Nothing."

"No you definitely said something."

She put her cup down. "Grandma doesn't like the finer things. Her favorite verse is about the meek inheriting the earth."

"Well, then why'd she give you such a nice Bible?"

"Maybe it was for you." She joked, "Maybe she thought you'd read it, see the light, and find a way to heaven."

"And keep from dragging you to hell?"

She said nothing.

"Virginia Fields!" I gasped, setting my cup down.

"But you said it!"

"God, maybe I am a terrible influence." I flopped forward over her legs and laid my forehead straight on the floor.

"No, you're not." The bottle and cups clinked as she moved them under the bed.

"I know, I can't get you to stay out after midnight, so I definitely can't get you into hell."

"Maybe if we commune with the devil and sacrifice a virgin, we can be in the same pit of fire forever." She joked lazily.

"I think we'd get tired of each other."

"But we'd be stuck there."

"Yeah,” I hummed in thought and turned my head to look at the fireplace light, “but you‘re the only virgin I know, so I’d have to kill you and sacrifice is probably like a straight shot to heaven."

“Maybe...I don’t know if I’d want to go without you though,” Ginny huffed and laid back onto the hardwood. We made a lopsided cross on the floor.

“No,” I mumbled, feeling the floor for her right hand with my right hand, “you should go. As long as you let me go to hell first. Live your life without me.”

She didn’t answer. I felt her right hand slip up to my elbow as her breathing slowed down. The cold wood finally lulled me to sleep as the fireplace light flickered on.

"I wish I could see Sissy one more time. It's terrible for her the snow came tonight, but good for me, I think. A nice cushion to walk on." Diana breathed low from the bed, eyes glancing feebly out the open window.

"You sound sure you're leaving tonight. You're going to live 'till you're an old woman." Despite her best efforts, the quiver in Margaret's voice betrayed her.

Diana had been certain for hours it was the end. Margaret had been certain for days.

As Diana finally fell asleep in the glory of the snow, Margaret kissed her forehead and waited until her friend's chest ceased its shallow march. She'd never tell anyone, but in the quiet of the night, as she stood up to alert Sam that his sister was dead, Margaret thought for a second that she'd seen a delicate set of footprints walking away in the snow.

So death had come again, but not for Margaret, never for Margaret. As badly as she wished for it, death decided time and time again to leave her waiting. Perhaps it was true that only the good die young. Perhaps this long life she had been cursed with was the result of some great crime she didn't remember committing.

tell me i'm a burden

you can't do it anymore

bedroom and a sermon

doesn't serve you anymore

"go get an apartment

that you can not afford

and hope nothing happens"

i can't do this anymore

The blades of emerald and juniper grass whisper songs of summers gone. Gone with the gentle wind of halcyon days lost to solitary years. Songs of blush lemondes and flushed cheeks from runs to distant hills. The hills nestle against the twilight blues of the crisp lakes we swam in on brutal nights. Our mothers would come searching the grassy shoreline with flashlights, waiting until we resurfaced, giggling until we were shivering from night breezes and stern threats of taking away our bedroom doors. The water is the same twilight blue of the shutters that covered the dining room windows that I would sit below, staring up at the peeling paint exposing the wooden frame. Waiting for Ms. Fields mother to swing the shutters and curtain open and tell me Ginny would be done with breakfast in 5 minutes; she would toss me an orange and warn me not to take her past the far hillside of the lake. Tiny waves break the blue and reveal distant periwinkle skies, the same color as Ginny's old lacey Sunday school dress. The comforting color I would seek out in the church classroom behind the stairs when Mrs. Langston would separate us to stop our giggling at the imagined smell of Noah’s Ark. Slow rolling clouds smell like the rainy days that wouldn't end.

A faded film scene, gold faded into blue when Ginny stopped coming for the summer. The puzzle piece trees don't interlock and catch me. Untouchable skies are too close to the ground, pressing down on my head and refusing to let go until I crumple into the earth to fossilize and become the oil that they're drilling for beyond the hills. The lake is shallow. I can reach the bottom in the middle, but I’m more at risk of drowning now that she's gone. From early June to late August, Ginny and I lived in the lake. Those all too short summers when she stayed with her grandmother, who demanded to be called “Great Fields.” From September to May, Great Fields lived alone in the wilting house with only my mother and I next door to keep her company. Ginny stopped coming after Great Fields died and left the house to her. No one came back for the house; nothing lives there anymore.

EP idea: the deep end of the pool

tracklist:

blood in the water

july

fever

lyric ideas:

"blood in the water, police on the scene

the girl cried "forgive me" but nobody did"

"you said 'the pool's like an ocean'

and started to cry

you said you wish your emotions

didn't feel like july"

"fever drips down my spine

i crack like a body falling from a great height

hitting the water, diving in straight

the lifeguards are hoping that it's not too late"

i suffer perennial delusions

those visions of grandeur

present a new hope annually

but each failure withers my bones

and i lie in wait, dreaming of a better day

when i will pick up the pen, say ‘dear reader’ and someone will truly be on the other side

verily i say unto thee, i am frightened and so alone

dreams of a life where all that glitters is gold and nothing breaks my bones and i’m never too cold and i don’t grow old wait behind my eyelids

that’s where i run to

that misty plane between this world and the next where dreamers walk every night, i walk among them in daylight

my mind constructs castles in the hazy air to which i’ll never hold the key

and so i stare up, up, up, and am left alone to dream

lost. thrust into the dark again.

wind burn ruins everything.

cataclysmic love for all things covered in snow…

i have nowhere else to go.

the rot in the roots is the same in the leaves and it spreads from tree to tree.

i have spent all these years trying to tell you.