The Bench

They were like the angel and the devil on my shoulders, except human. Two right-hand men. A couple of jesters. Lions on each side. The pride of Ketchikan. Simon, Justin, and I sat on the bench that was at the foot of the large had come by the condominium up Carlanna Lake Road, the very same one that I lived at with my parents. It was a clear day toward the end of the summer. We decided to sit in the backyard of the unit that my parents rented during that time. I was headed to Virginia the next day. I was going to attend community college. I was going to try to fix my life. But before the delving into the seriousness of the situation, we traded jokes back and forth about the lives we had lived with each other for the past year. The time we danced the night away in Justin’s basement after getting loaded off of Mountain Dew and junk food. The Safeway runs to purchase whatever amount of legal tender we could amass between the 3 of us. The lost cause and how they had held me down from ever really taking things to the next level of oblivion. We never really brought up how serious our next step into the world would be. Looking back, boy, were they clumsy.

I’d imagine heard about people with near death experiences talk about the flash forward. They see the events of their lives play out in super speed, like a VCR whirring through a rented Blockbuster tape, except they cannot pause on the good moments and definitely cannot fast forward through the bad ones. Underneath that Sitka Spruce tree on the faded blue bench that had been on its umpteenth coat of paint, we sat in silence. Everything around me was alive. The stone slabs that wrapped around the tree in the circle were covered in moss, signaling to me where they would be in the future. Still stone slabs collecting moss. Bits and pieces of the stone at the mercy of the test of time, being worn away from weather. The rains. The unpredictable winds. Perhaps the way they were rolled and placed to bear witness in that time in history. I sat there watching the afternoon fade away too fast for my liking. Tomorrow would come. Overwhelmed, I began crying. I didn’t want to leave Alaska. I didn’t want to leave my friends. I wanted to hit pause. I wanted to fast forward to a time where we would be together again. Simon and Justin remained quiet. Maybe they didn’t know what to say. Maybe too they were alarmed at what tomorrow’s tides signaled for them too, a choppy set waiting for all of us to carve. After all, I wasn’t the only one alive and a miracle in that very moment. What a miracle we were all together, even if it meant we had to say goodbye. I looked at the balcony on the third floor unit. The American flag flapping and undulating. It teased of a kind of possibility, the ripples of the past, the thorough line of my family’s history. I felt the paradox of life’s rusted dagger in my heart – I had finally found where I belonged. No yelling to stop. No commands to man-up. I was here. And all of a suddeny, it was time to move on. I stood up. Simon and Justin, without command, followed suit. I hugged them both. I walked them to their car, and I watched them drive toward where they needed to be.