Response

 I watch as she crumbles sun-dried leaves in the palms of her hands and sprinkles them like gold dust across the sidewalk, though her mere contribution to their decay has made them more valuable than any precious metal. She towers over me her long legs devouring great lengths of the walkway so that I am almost in pursuit as she continues her decoration of the concrete. Each sway of her perfect hips conducts a symphony of rippling fabric harmonized with the clatter of her high heels. Only a year older she gives credence to the lie I am years younger.

“Where are you going to school this year?” she asks with actual interest unlike the million other adults who use that question to fill voids in conversations.

“I am not.”

In one flawless motion she stops and turns on her heel. Her ebony curls halt seconds after her. “Why not?” Those two simple words hit me harder than all the complex reactions and lectures I have received over the last two weeks.

“I don't like school.” All my supposed intellect and that is the sentence I manage.

“Acceptable.”

“That's it? That's all you have to say?”

 She let's the small echo of a laugh ring in her throat. “What else is there to say? You have always been adamant on your hatred of school and people in general. It's no surprise you don't have any plans. Sure, I could scold you like a parent. Or tell you that you are wasting your potential, but you've already heard all of that before, Perry. I know you have.”

I stand there for a moment, the setting sun baking my face past the clouds, my mind racing to find a reply. 

Maybe if she lectured I would listen. She could tell me what school to go to and I'll happily go. I will quit snapping pencils in frustration and write an entrance essay. I'll quit staying up nights dissecting our conversations and start studying. Everything she's ever said I have received like a starving man devours rations. I have cataloged all her advice, etching each one forcibly into my mind. If she asked for me to die, then I would ask her preferred method.

I would certainly follow her like Orpheus through the Sisyphean torment that is academia if she asked. Without a single complaint. She gave me the gift of stability. Understanding. Shining a light on the darkness that is my possible insanity. She's the reason I made it through school at all. I know she cares for me, but does she love me? Does she spend sleepless hours admiring the way my gaunt hips fit into jeans? Does she even think of me that way? I don't care if her love is not physical, if she cherishes my opinions like I do hers. Is there any love between us at all? Or have my imagined encounters and experiences never had a co-author? 

I don't say a word though, I stay silent letting years of unspoken dialogue wash over me.
We've spent hours in her room discussing the finer points of a television drama yet I can't say what I want to her now. I've laid my head on her lap and stared up at the stars but I knew our physical contact was more beautiful than the billion celestial bodies racing through the universe. I knew I was close to true wonder beside her, the kind Poe would mourn for a hundred years were he gifted with such longevity.

She wipes off her hands. The hands I held at prom whilst her feet dodged mine. Hands that have robbed me of so much crippling anxiety and have stroked the mania from my scalp. Fingers that fiddled with my hair on the free days in school. 

Her eyes are inquisitive. “Do you not have a response Perry?”

“No I don't.”