August 5th, 1990
Turns out, the world has teeth; and it can bite you whenever it feels necessary. It had been a hot day in July, the sun beating down on us as we squinted so our eyes created two half-moons. It was me and you back then, swinging our legs off wooden docks in lakes where Papa and Nana had a summer house, splashing one another until I eventually got annoyed and pushed you in. We were “thick as thieves”, as Nana use to say, and nothing could separate us, not even when the earth crumbled beneath us and brought down your house during the night.
It’s been grey skies ever since. The sun doesn’t come out anymore, for it’s always watching behind those dark clouds that seemed to have followed me all my life. I don’t try to look forward; all I’ve been doing is trying to write out every morsel of you in me, scraping out memories of us like the last bit in a jam jar with a knife much too bothersome. I’ve thrown the curtains together, leaving them shut with only a small lamp near my bed to serve as my daylight. All the pictures of us are stored in an old Ouija box stuffed beneath my bed and I haven’t dared reached for it, even in the worst times where my hollowness echoes inside me.
The day the earthquake came, you and Bennie were curled in bed at around ten o’clock with Aunt Helen and Uncle Ollie sitting in front of the TV, watching re-runs of Seinfeld. The earthquake came and went, severing the house with a single crack left in the earth. Aunt Helen and Uncle Ollie made it out in time for the roof to cave in, right where your bedroom was. Bennie came out soon after. It’s almost as if the sky spilt in half, and I guess half was right where you were; always right in the middle of things.
Your house was red, and I remember you use to say the frame was painted from thrown tomatoes staining the white paint beneath. Your parents let some of the horses out, and neighbors would wake with a horse lingering by their back door, coming by with tomatoes as weaponry. We use to grab tomatoes from the backyard (because in our family, everyone had gardens), and run into the meadow off the dirt road, seeing who could throw a tomato the farthest, and eventually, who could cover the other in the nauseating red from head to toe.
I was only twelve when the earthquake came, and the news channels still bring it up every once in a while, using it as the “new highest ranking on the Richter scale”. In the beginning, I had tallied the days since your death, until the one year anniversary when just I and Bennie sat at the old oak tree out back of your house. There was just rubble in place of your house at that point. I took the Ouija box out that day, and the journal tied with twine, pages sticking out with ink blotted here and there. Bennie and I stayed ‘till nighttime when the stars peeked from behind their ivory blanket of darkness and the moon swallowed all the light in the sky. We use to catch fireflies in old mason jars and poke holes with twigs in the top, using them as our nightlights until we eventually saw the little critters becoming dull from loneliness, so we let them out, chasing them in the dark, Bennie jumping up on us, his dark curls shedding over our sweaters.
When the tallies rounded up to 1,825 in my little journal, I brought myself to visit Aunt Helen and Uncle Ollie. I had heard they moved to the city and were doing well with a new dog, Jule, to keep them company. It took some time but I eventually came around to Boston to have dinner with them, reminiscing of all the summers spent with you.
I came back the next day, where the noise died out in the long winding road that led me to your house. The oak tree was still there, its leaves long gone, branches arched towards the ground, curtsying to your childhood. I walked over to the base and sat down, my legs folded in front of me, digging my hands across my eyes until I felt a tear slide down my cheek; the first time I’ve cried since.
A market down the dirt road sold tomatoes, and that was where I found myself when I took note of the hollowness inside of me beginning to echo and rattle my bones. I grabbed ahold of a wooden crate and filled it to the brim my weaponry.
I picked up a tomato from the crate in back of the truck, turning it in my hands slowly, watching it as my eyes started spouting a leak. I walked towards the oak tree and raised my right hand until it touched my right ear and flung the tomato onto the tree. It wasn’t the house, but it was where we fell asleep to summers of stars and fireflies. One tomato turned to five, until I was giving all I could with everything I had at the oak tree where you and I were. Where you and I had shared so many secrets, burying old skeleton keys in the ground as to dig a grave to all our conversations in whispers. Never did I think that I would bury the body of my closest friend.
The tomatoes left my hand in a blur of nauseating red and salted tears pricking at the corners of my eyes. When I reached behind me to pick up another tomato, I realized then they were all gone and my arms and hands were covered in a deep red. The carton stayed at the base of the tree, so did the journal. I walked back to the truck, looking over our memories; with bloody hands, I say good-bye.

-Frank Miller