⠀⠀⠀“I’m being buried, I think, under all this rubble,” is what I say to her. She nods like she understands but I don’t think she does. I don’t try to elaborate.
⠀⠀⠀“What’s the rubble made of,” she asks instead.
⠀⠀⠀“Bricks and concrete. Stone. It’s made of heavy things with too many sharp edges. As rubble is wont to be.” We’re in her room, but she’s hanging out the window smoking a blunt. I’m still star-fished on her bed, staring up at the faded and half-stuck glow-in-the-dark stars. They’ve been there since before I was born; I think. “How’s Amy?”
⠀⠀⠀“Don’t know, don’t care,” she says, into a ring of smoke.
⠀⠀⠀“So that’s how it is, now.”
⠀⠀⠀“Yeah, that’s how it is.”
⠀⠀⠀“Shame. I thought she was nice.”
⠀⠀⠀“So did I,” is slammed down with the window, the blunt a flickering ember in the Dark Somewhere. It seems like a fine thing to be—a flickering ember. I might want to try being one someday. I say as much. She looks at me like I’m crazy.
⠀⠀⠀I find the blunt on the sidewalk when I walk home the next morning. It’s not actually there, anymore, but the mark it left is.
⠀⠀⠀“The rubble is still there,” I say to her three days later, “I’m still trapped.”
⠀⠀⠀“Then dig yourself out,” is all she says.
⠀⠀⠀Dig myself out. I carve it into a brick and add it to the top of the pile.
⠀⠀⠀“You’re just hiding behind metaphors, Danny,” she says to me one night. “It’s the writer in you. You writers are always so fucking dramatic.”
⠀⠀⠀“I have nothing else to be,” is what I don’t say. “Maybe you’re right,” is what I do.
⠀⠀⠀“How long you got left?”
⠀⠀⠀“…Five weeks.”
⠀⠀⠀“A damn shame,” she says, like she doesn’t care. I really don’t think she does. “Is it really that bad? The rubble, I mean.”
⠀⠀⠀“I’m being buried alive. A whole building’s collapsed on me and no matter what I do, it’s never enough to escape. I’m trying hard to make it enough. But it never is. And for every piece of rubble I clear away, ten more take its place. I’m drowning in a lake of bricks. And I’m tired. I’m so tired. I just want to sleep.”
⠀⠀⠀“You shouldn’t.”
⠀⠀⠀“Don’t worry,” I smile, though it’s dulled by the weight of the rubble, “I’ll be gentle when I wake up.”
⠀⠀⠀She’s quiet for a long time. “Five weeks isn’t very long.”
⠀⠀⠀“It isn’t.”
⠀⠀⠀“Your birthday’s in six.”
⠀⠀⠀“You should get new stars,” I say, “these ones are falling.”
⠀⠀⠀“Maybe I’ll do the constellations this time.”
⠀⠀⠀I smile. “You should do Orion. Orion’s my favorite. Make sure Betelgeuse is orange.”
⠀⠀⠀“I will,” she says.
⠀⠀⠀“What’s the rubble made of now,” she asks, four weeks later.
⠀⠀⠀“Flowers, I’m hoping.”
⠀⠀⠀“What kind of flowers?”
⠀⠀⠀“Lavender and lotus flowers would be nice, I think.”
⠀⠀⠀“But not lilies?”
⠀⠀⠀“No, not lilies. I don’t like the way they smell.”
⠀⠀⠀“Lavender and lotus flowers it is, then.”
Asher Astrum is a second-year pursuing a BFA in Creative Writing here at SOU. They also write under the name A.J. Alastairs.
Main Squeeze Literary Journal 