He remembers the first time you whispered that name at the bedroom ceiling, sacred as a prayer in the Sistine Chapel. He remembers running through the rain until you were both drowned and breathless, soaking the sheets in a desperate, wet grab for each other.

He remembers with piercing clarity that night you spent in the produce section, the way you said those three words, the three syllables that made you his forever, while placing oranges in a cellophane bag.

He misses oranges. Maybe if he had more vitamin C in his system he would’ve survived the gunshot.

That was the last time you went to the grocery store. The last time you saw a movie under the globed lights of fate, the last time you ate bread sideways at a Cheesecake Factory and went home laughing in the downpour.

The first bullet flew the next day; it would have torn your cellophane bag to shreds. Sometimes he imagines that lone orange rolling down the pavement, soaking up dust and hate amidst a concrete wasteland.

No one tells you that gunshots are permanent. They are flukes, fluctuations, moments of intense anger and wrong, but never permanent. No one tells you that you will be the target of one. That one day you will find yourself on the other end of a gun and you will not think oh my fucking god’ but ‘I knew this day would come.’

He remembers the pride flag you had hanging off your trellis, such a permanent fixture that the ivy and weeds had fused with it. He remembers the way he gave you grief for it, things like: ‘You can barely even see it anymore’ or ‘I guess we’re only half gay now.’ You would simply laugh and smack his arm and kiss him against the trellis under stripes of red orange and invisible purple.

He remembers months later taking a daring peek out of the window and finding it riddled with bullet holes. He did not look out the window again for a very long time.

In a way he didn’t mind, because on the inside you were his view, and you were beautiful. Better than a mountain in the snow or a beach at sunset.

He remembers your eyes, their creamy brown like the tip of a pencil, and the way they slowly faded into two dull pieces of lead. Lead the color of bullets.

He misses oranges and the smell of sidewalks in the rain, the way your face haloed in the sun when you tipped your head up to the sky, swallowing down sunshine like it was a drug.

Now you are in withdrawal, living like shadows as you cling to the walls and the darkness and the indigo tiles in the kitchen. Blue was always your least favorite color. “Too sad,” you said. “The only good tears fall from the sky.” But you cried all the time then, tears mingling with the grout and the throw pillows and the blueberries you ate for dinner.

He remembers the way your eyes spun—wild, frantic—as you yanked open the front door; the way he slammed it shut so hard he bruised his palm. It was only half a second, maybe less, but in that time he watched your life pass him by. Saw an empty apartment with only a tattered rainbow flag and tear-stained indigo tiles to show for it; his bleeding, broken heart left seeping into the oval-shaped rug. You would never come back. He remembers that fear like a snake with its fangs stuck in his throat.

He remembers the way you fought, heat and desperation in your words, longing for even one lick of fresh butter, one single chunk out of the sidewalk outside. You would have displayed that piece of cement in your home like one of Van Gogh’s masterpieces, behind glass and under stage lights. He remembers not being able to remember, and the way that argument ended, in tears substituted for rain.

“Don’t go,” he said. “You can’t go.” Maybe he is desperate too, but he will keep you here until he is reduced to one of the splatters of blood on your flower boxes. You wilt, but you stay.

He remembers the day the bullets claimed your sister. She was always louder than you, more outspoken, less willing to lay down and let your golden retriever go to sleep on her chest. She was a force, and you were gravity.

She was out on the street when it happened, painting the pavement with rainbow colored chalk: a portrait of two girls kissing under a rainbow cloud and a storm of gold, the rivulets of her blood filling in the last of the girl’s lips.

He remembers the day her picture joined the rest of them on the news, a never-ending grid of faces and stories cut off by the muffled booms outside your front door.

“Does it ever hit you, how big the world is?” you asked him.
“Yes. All the damn time.”
He remembers the day he walked into the living room and found her elementary school picture smashed on the carpet, the way he bandaged your hand and stained the kitchen sink red with glass and blood.

You missed that golden retriever, and your sister with her winged dinosaur lunchbox, and the life you used to have. He remembers that feeling, knowing he would never be enough no matter how many suns he painted above your headboard. He had fallen for a lover, a lifer, a bright yellow firefly who could not be contained in a jar.

It was his own fault, really, for loving you so much. For wanting to do everything in his power to get that smile back, the uninhibited one that took over your face and refused to let go. He wanted to be enthralled again, by your joy and your lips and the way you said his name at the bedroom ceiling.

The small theater that only played indie films was long abandoned. He remembers the way the letters on the ‘now playing’ sign swung down on rusty hinges, turning ‘Forever the Dove’ into ‘No ever be love.’ He unscrewed one of the small orbs and blew the dust off of it, waiting to hear a sneeze or a cough, or a gunshot in the distance. Nothing came.

The Cheesecake Factory was still open, the smell of sourdough and burnt candles wafting through the door. He tried to sit up tall, to look sure of himself for the three other patrons in the corner with guns strapped to their thighs.

He remembers eating a chunk of sourdough from front to back, then wrapping up the rest in a cloth napkin and tucking it in his waistband like a flour-covered gun.

The grocery store was fuller than he’d ever seen it, only a can of spam or a bushel of apples missing here and there. The oranges were stacked in a perfect pyramid, and he remembers thinking how easy it would be to make the whole thing tumble. He was so tempted, just to watch the bright spots fill his vision, to see trails of vibrant orange tracking through the aisles. A chaos that couldn’t kill; their love filling a place bigger than the apartment.

He remembers placing two oranges in a bag, the way the old cellophane stretched with their weight, and the way his shoes left dusty footprints on the pavement, right in the middle of the street because all the cars had retired to garages and curbs and musty disuse.

He should have gone on the sidewalk. He remembers that too, the way the oranges made him feel bold, almost like they were singing at him. We deserve to be shown off. Maybe those oranges would’ve made it home if they weren’t so naive.

He remembers looking in the mirror when he was ten and knowing something was different; not the slightly too light freckles or the one curl that fell over his forehead, but something inscrutable, slippery, and with a grin that split like thunder. Something that lived under his skin, in his blood, that peeked its head out sometimes and made people look at him funny. You can only see rainbows when it rains.

The first drop pelted his shoulder, right where the crescent moon sat beneath his shirt, and he remembers stopping, right there in the middle of the long-forgotten street, and holding a stunned hand up to the sky.

Water dripped down his palm and onto the pavement, washing the dust and his footprints away like the tide over your three-story sandcastle last July. He remembers licking his finger and the way it tasted like his mother’s pound cake, sweet and soft and nothing at all like tears.

He remembers laughing, a sudden, halting thing that bucked like a horse and sent him sprawling in the street. He cried and drew wet hands over his face, letting the water seep into the roots of his hair and the dried-up arteries of his heart.

He remembers thinking how much you would have loved this. He remembers thinking how much he loved you and how happy you would be when he came back with a cellophane bag full of raindrops, right before the barrel hit his chest.

He remembers the slur and the taunting, the endless back and forth through the dust and puddles until the whole street looked like mud. He remembers the boom, remembers thinking how much louder it was without your front door to muffle it, and wondering if this is what all those anonymous faces on the news thought too, in their final moments.

He remembers wishing there was a pair of lips for his blood to fill, or a rainbow cloud, or at least something other than the holes in the pavement. He remembers the crackle of cellophane as his hand fell limp, the shadow of an old bruise aching on his palm, and the way he wished it was between you and the door instead of in his congealing blood.

The last thing he remembers is a lone orange rolling down the bloody pavement, soaking up dust and hate and his life along with it.