The Lake House

I remember the setting sun plunging into the lake and
The scent of impending loneliness in my sinuses
You held my hand as we watched an abandoned rowboat float
Slowly across the lake, oars lost to the depths.
After you let go and walked into the water, I could still feel
Your fingerprints in that space between my knuckles where you had rested.
I watched as you melted into the part of my mind that never stops working, That never stops ticking,
That never punches a clock
That never ends the song that it’s singing
That never dozes off after a drunken night
That never becomes anything more than an eternal Tomb for the Unknown What Ifs.

Your head sunk below the surface and the water became still.
For a while, I imagined that the lake was a sidewalk made of the deepest bluest asphalt and I could just walk past you, look down and smile like I was looking at a child’s chalk drawing.

I’d look at that drawing and it wouldn’t have your pastel smile.
It wouldn’t have your dark uvula.
The lake would not swallow me like yesterday’s takeout.
Instead I’d be doing my best impression of Jesus, sauntering above you as if you were nothing more than a stingray in a tank at a science museum.

So I tried. 
I placed a hesitant foot on a Lily pad.
I hopped onto the crest of a wave.
I slid along a current. 
I chased a frog.

I looked down and below me, all I saw was the great expanse of you.
I gasped for breath.
I stumbled.
I drowned.