His eyes were green and sharp like the nettles in the fresh fields. He was wearing his slightly faded overalls, his staple outfit in the dewy summer. Sitting in the aged room in the abandoned house we imagined was our own, we shared words. They swarmed the air, like flies that would never land. They spoke of the future, a wedding, and bouquets of pure white gardenias, waiting for the day their little wings would settle. I wished I were the way he was, that I didn’t feel lonely whenever he left, knowing he could go on with his life. That instead of critiquing every inch of my appearance, I could walk around in his holey sneakers. I wanted to be able to bleed like the boys do, have the same privileges of suffering. 

His worst fear was the rain, by God. Even if the wind picked up the slightest bit, we’d have to run inside before he started panicking. He told me not to worry about him, but his jumpy nature made me uneasy. He was scared of the most peculiar things: pictures on the wall, the way the radio towers looked at night. He’s the spitting image of his father, who fought in the military so many years ago. It was like he could see the end in everything. It almost made me angry, his worrisome nature, and I wish I had never told him now much it bothered me. 

Sometimes when the sun bleeds through the windows, and it glims on the dead flies aligning the windowsill, I think of him. Whenever I scrape my knee or touch the pews after service, I close my eyes, and his face is in my head. The face he made at me the night he left, a look of devotion, but his pupils dilated like he saw what was to come. That night marked the night of the biggest tempest storm in Wichita. I find it ironic that God twisted his fate in his fingers with what he was most afraid of.