Where were you calling me from? Your voice was like fireworks, misfiring and then hitting every wrong beat on their way down. I could hear something behind you-or was it to the left?-and it made your words distort queerly, like shadows coming through a glass of water and bending in shapes I didn't recognize.
I thought it was a girl, another girl. For a minute. But then you sounded alone. Maybe I won't ever know; maybe I will. But you'll have to be the one to tell, won't you? And there's so much you don't tell. All your words line up like pearls at the bottom of a sea, out of their oysters, but drowned, like they don't want to be found.
I can't find my keys, Britt, I think. But keys sounded like breeze. That didn't make sense to me, but you sometimes don't make any kind of sense when you're drunk. I couldn't make your words fit with my ears, but I could hear the tequila, and I thought for a minute I could smell it in the air in my room, too. But that wasn't true-my room was empty, it was only me there, and all the space left behind that used to be filled up with your laugh and your words and your smell.
Sorry I called, you said at the end, and that was the only thing I was sure of. Your laugh was tinny and I thought again of the fireworks, set off at the wrong moment, broken, leaking the colors out in the wrong order, all wrong.
It's ok, Santana. Where are you?
I think you laughed again, but the other girl-noise was back, and I don't know. Maybe it was a sigh. The call cut out and I still thought maybe I could hear you in the silence left after.