Spark Ave.

You left the party and I followed you the quarter of a mile down Spark Avenue and sat next to you on a broken down park bench. You pressed your face into the palms of your hands and began to cry as the rain came. The weather was cold and unforgiving.  I gave you my jacket and wrapped my arms around you because I was afraid that you might get sick. Then I carried you home. I carried you back down Spark Avenue and out onto the highway and then down towards the ocean. You lived a block from the shore and already the streets were flooded. I kept looking down, half expecting to see a school of fish swim past my ankles, but they never did. I took you upstairs and laid you down onto your bed and for a few quiet moments you, the rain, and I were the only things in existence. I watched your eyelids flutter and felt your slow, steady pulse as you slept. As suddenly as you had gone to sleep, you were awake again. Your eyes flew open and stared straight back into mine. A smile crept across your lips and in those upturned inner corners I could see the truth. You were, in fact, stone cold drunk. You were plastered. You were gone. I saw this strange mix of emotion come over your eyes. You looked at me with a mixture of lust and disgust and, still, you kissed me on the mouth. You wrapped your arms around my waist and took me down onto the bed with you. For a moment, I resisted. I told you we should save this. Save it for some other night, some other time, some other place. But you said no and that everything would be alright. Still, I ran. I ran scared. I ran back towards the "dry side" of town and back down Spark Avenue and back to that bench. I wanted to run all the way back in time. I wanted to take you back to that bench and back to when you were crying so I could tell you everything would be OK. I wanted to tell you that I loved you before you kissed me and before you were drunk and before it wouldn't matter anymore. So, as the rain began to dissipate, I pressed my face into the palms of my hands and I cried of that bench in the middle of Spark Avenue wishing I could turn back time.