I finish a run and see I have a voicemail from Matt.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruth tidbit colon,\u201d he says. He does this when leaving voicemails, stating his punctuation marks like he\u2019s dictating. Mostly because he knows it makes me laugh. \u201cI used to be really jealous of you and Pilot\u2019s relationship. Now I love how we kinda have our own unique friendship too. I know that\u2019s dumb,\u201d he says. \u201cEll oh ell. Miss you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I wonder if he\u2019s been drinking.<\/p>\n
His voice doesn\u2019t sound like it, but he gets emotional when drinking. I get nostalgic. Two sides of the same coin. Maybe even the same side.<\/p>\n
Or maybe I wonder because it is an earnest truth I myself would probably only say, at least unprompted, when drinking.<\/p>\n
I call Matt back, leave a voicemail in return. \u201cIt\u2019s not dumb exclamation point,\u201d I say, because doing his thing back at him makes him smile. It makes me smile too. Turning his thing into our thing. \u201cI used to get jealous of you and Bud. And I get jealous when Mike and Mary go visit their friends in California. Exclamation point!\u201d<\/p>\n
I want to say I hadn\u2019t realized that about myself until I said it out loud, though of course I had. I knew. I\u2019d never said it aloud though. Usually I try to not even admit to myself that I knew, to the point where saying it out loud feels like its own kind of realization.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Midway through a run we used to go on together, listening to an album we used to listen to together, I start thinking of Matt. I get emotional, but inspired too. I run a little faster; feel a little lighter, in stride and in spirit.<\/p>\n
At the end of the run, I call him, leave a voicemail. \u201cWent on a run today and was thinking about you. And then Tunde sang\u2026\u201d I pause. I want to sing the lyric but get embarrassed. But then I make myself swallow the embarrassment, make myself sing it like I know I should. Like I want to. \u201c\u2018I\u2019m a happy idiot\u2026 Waving at cars\u2026\u2019\u201d I sing, and the singing, and the making myself sing, and the thinking about Matt listening to me sing to him, it all makes me smile. \u201cMiss you,\u201d I say. \u201cExclamation point!\u201d I add.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I write a story about Matt only I change his name to Pilot. And then to Shotgun. Then to Kevin. Then back to Matt.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about Matt, but isn\u2019t. It\u2019s all made up, but is honest and true in that way that fiction can be. OK, it\u2019s mostly made up. In that way fiction can be.<\/p>\n
I check my phone and have a voicemail from Matt. Like\u2019d he known I was thinking about him. Writing about him. Like he was knowing I was wondering what he might thinking about it. If it might be too weird. The parts I made up, the parts I didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever too weird,\u201d Matt\u2019s voicemail assures me. \u201cShit pops in your head and comes out your hand onto the page. It\u2019s all little pieces to puzzles.\u201d<\/p>\n
I smile. I like this way of thinking about stories. And about him. And him thinking it about stories and me.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
End of a long day, I\u2019m exhausted. I have a few drinks. I get emotional. Or nostalgic. Or maybe those are the same thing.<\/p>\n
I dig out my memory box. My box of mementos I never had a word for until I had a student who wrote an essay about her box of mementos and titled it \u201cMemory Box.\u201d Old ticket stubs from concerts and movies; my first, long-expired debit card; old school IDs; the shark tooth necklace my grandmother gave me; a folded-up note from my mom. There on top is the postcard I bought on my last roadtrip, intending to send it to Matt. Buried down deeper\u2014deep enough that it\u2019s there but excavation would have to be purposeful, never accidental\u2014is his funeral program.<\/p>\n
I stare at the postcard and remember where I was on my roadtrip when I bought it. Buying it because I was thinking of him. Thinking of our runs, the time we\u2019d roadtripped across the country together, just hanging out.<\/p>\n
A few years after buying this postcard on a roadtrip, I got a call from Pilot that Matt had died. He\u2019d been riding his bike to go watch a baseball game and hit by a driver. The driver swore, and other witnesses confirmed, that Matt had suddenly veered into traffic. There was nothing the driver could do. No one ever knew if Matt had hit a rock or his brakes or a gear got stuck, if he\u2019d just been goofing around and hadn\u2019t seen the car coming or he fell, or something more intentional that no one ever mentioned, and I don\u2019t think anyone actually believed, though I somehow knew we all wondered. One of those mysteries of life that feels like knowing the answer to would change things, though of course it wouldn\u2019t. It was the same grief either way. Or maybe different grief, but neither better nor worse. Different sides of the same coin.<\/p>\n
At some point in the days or weeks or months after\u2014it\u2019s hard to know, time having become a blur of grief for a while there\u2014I started leaving him voicemails when I was thinking about him. When I missed him. At another point, some time after that, I started imagining voicemails that he was leaving me back. Telling me what I needed to hear or echoing the conversations of old that had stuck with me or just saying hi.<\/p>\n
I turn the postcard over and written on the back is (Exclamation point) and his address. I don\u2019t know why I never sent it. Time got away from me. Life got away from me. I call Matt\u2019s old number, leave him a voicemail telling him all of that. I think about the voicemail from him tomorrow in response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I write a story about Matt only I change his name to Pilot. And then to Shotgun. Then to Kevin. Then back to Matt. It\u2019s about Matt, but isn\u2019t. It\u2019s all made up, but is honest and true in that way that fiction can be. OK, it\u2019s mostly made up. In that way fiction can be.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[2621,952],"class_list":["post-20178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-fiction","tag-running","writer-aaron-burch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20178"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20630,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20178\/revisions\/20630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}