JT EVERGREEN SHORT STORIES

As told by Richard Tracy The last evening we were together found us sitting on the end of an old pier, our favorite meeting place. The clarity and brilliance of the full moon in the clear night sky made it seem so close you could reach out and touch it. Watching this heavenly body move silently across the horizon, we hardly said a word to one another. We had grown so close, words were no longer necessary Conor laughed when I reached out toward the moon, “I know. I was thinking the same thing.” “It seems so close.” He leaned back and lightly touched my back. I smiled and leaned back, resting my head on his abdomen. We had come of age together, doing all the foolish things kids do including experimenting with sex which included a good deal of laughter until the day arrived when we stopped laughing and realized something else was happening. You read about first loves … but when it actually happens to you, it’s like walking on the moon and wondering how you got the...

Every time we say goodbye, I die a little. The first time we said goodbye was the morning after the first night we spent together. For some reason, I did not want to leave you. I felt so comfortable just being there next to you. I almost cried when you suggested I stay since it was a long weekend. It wasn’t long enough for either of us. We became such good friends or was it a friendship that began many lifetimes ago and we picked it up where we left off the last time. It seemed that way to me. There were many little goodbyes for this, that, and the other, and e very time we said goodbye, I wondered why a little. When your call to duty came and you were gone from me, I wondered why the gods above me, who must be in the know, think so little of me, they allowed you to go. When your first leave came, when you were near, there was such an air of spring about it. I swore I could hear a lark somewhere begin to sing about it. How I cherished each moment we were together, and ...

As told by Charlie Morgan Death seems so final. That’s a dumb thing to say . . . it is final . . . so very, very final. It’s the end of everything that really matters. It’s like driving into a brick wall. I’ve never driven into a brick wall but I assume the impact is the same as having someone die in your arms. It’s like closing a book you’ve been reading for more than twenty years. You remember everything you’ve read but you can’t open the book again. You set it on the table and stare at it – a tin cylinder filled with ashes. Everything that has gone before suddenly stops and you’re alone. It wasn’t sudden. I knew it was coming and thought I was prepared, but I wasn’t . . . no one is. I didn’t realize until the light faded from his eyes and his body relaxed that he was truly gone and I was alone. It dawned on me at that moment – I had been loved every single moment of every single day since we met in that stuck elevator and now it was over, and I was no longer loved. Friends ...