cardboard boy

i wrote this november 2022 and it has never been more relevant than right now..my foresight..

Six o’clock on the dot, already swinging out the revolving door, Kira dashes across the street to escape the ever-interesting life of an insurance broker. She sighs as she takes a second, a literal blessed second, to herself before preparing to drive to her friend’s birthday party. The friend, Angela, the smartest woman Kira had ever talked to, was having an “intimate get-together” at her swanky city apartment, a place Kira never even dared to ask how much rent was. Kira didn’t live in the city, not the city anyhow, just a city, in a state, in the States, close to a bigger city but just far enough away that nothing new or exciting ever happened. Kira was stuck, stuck in a job, stuck in a life that was filled with Sex and the City reruns and pints of Ben & Jerry’s. She secretly wished to be the non-existent fifth in the Carrie Bradshaw-centered friend group, she wanted to be a fly on the wall, she thought that if she was within the proximity to women’s promiscuity, she would finally get laid. Kira wasn’t a virgin, but it felt like it had been long enough that she could proclaim herself one again. Again, nothing new happened in her city, the city of ex’s, the city of everyone she ever knew. She was stuck, she needed something to fulfill her, and she would hope to at least find someone to take her mind off that for tonight at Angela’s swanky birthday party.

Kira quickly changed into some too-short dress with too-high heels, fluffed her hair, applied some eyeliner and blush, and sped off. Arriving at a surprisingly perfect time, sun is down, she can hear the muffled bass coming from speakers from two floors down, the elevator climbing high and finally dinging and Kira is greeted to a sea of people with beer and seltzer and cups of some signature drink Angela has invented for this momentous affair, it’s loud in here, but not too loud, the party playlist running through the halls like an aroma, Kira took a breath, relaxed, put her best foot forward and ate shit. Face planted, on the ground, her too-high heels betraying her. Kira groaned, she felt a hand on her back and looked up and saw the most beautiful green eyes she had seen in her life, he was so attractive that she felt like she died and he was an angel guiding her to wherever you go when you die. Maybe when you die it’s just hot men asking if you’re okay. In that moment, she had accepted her fate, that she had died and got to spend eternity with the most strikingly wonderfully handsome man in the world–

“Hey, oh my God, are you okay? You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” The angel says.

“An angel, actually,” Kira rubbed her head and tried to knock some sense into herself. She was, in fact, alive, and he was just a man, a beautiful one at that. He stuck out his hand to shake hers, and also help her to her wobbly feet.

“Nice to meet you, I’m Travis, you’re Kira right? Angela doesn’t stop talking about you, she’s talked about you a lot to me actually..” He trailed off like he’s used to being told to stop talking too much, and also because he was extremely nervous because she was more beautiful than Angela had ever let on. Maybe that was an ego thing, but this isn't a story about Angela. She just happened to have given the universe, Kira’s and Travis’s universes, the tools for the two to meet. And the rest goes from there. 

Travis and Kira talk all night, they don’t even kiss because they’re so enthralled by each other’s words, and Kira never tells Travis to shut up, and Travis never tells Kira to shut up. They enjoy each other, they talk all day and all night for weeks and weeks, even when they’re together the conversation is so stimulating that they don’t even have to make love, but they do. And they do it well. They do everything well together, it’s like they were made for each other, made to find each other. They start believing in fate, and true love, and soulmates, and whatever goes with being delusionally in love, obsessed, infatuated with another person. It’s beautiful, it’s a whirlwind, it doesn’t stop being good. They found each other, Kira never expected to find this type of love, this type of relationship, and neither did Travis. It’s beautiful, it’s lovely, it’s everything they ever hoped for in life. And then Travis dies.

One day, three years after Angela’s party, Travis gets up for work, grabs a fistful of Kira’s ass and kisses her cheek before leaving, like every other morning. He gets in his car, he lights a cigarette, he puts on his favorite playlist. He drives, window down, arm slightly hanging out so the whole car doesn’t reek of smoke, Kira doesn’t love smelling like cigarettes, yet she loves the smell on him. He takes a long drag, starts coughing, coughing really bad, he can’t find his water and he can’t really focus on the road, he swerves a bit, really hacking up a lung, colliding with a tanker truck and blowing up. Exploding. There are bits of Travis hanging all over the interstate. He died, in the horrific way that he died, no way did he deserve that but life isn’t fair. His funeral was bleak, lots of tears, lots of heartbreak. 

Kira was numb. Kira cried, oh God did she cry, she heaved, she groaned, she screamed, for hours, and hours, and days, after she heard about what happened to the love of her life. To the love she would never have again, and would never know again, and could never feel again, not from the one she wanted, ever again. But then, she felt numb. She could no longer think about Travis, she could no longer dwell on him, for it had been over two years since he passed and she couldn’t live like this forever. Her friends were kind and generous with Kira’s grief, but they had been trying to get her back out onto the dating scene for a very long time. Maybe it was time to go on a date, or maybe it was time to do something else. Kira had a plan.

She made a slideshow and got all of her friends together. She wanted them to know she was serious about this, and that it was something she had put a lot of time, and effort, and blood, and sweat, and tears into. Kira had made a time machine. Her friends laughed in her face. She got frustrated, but she presented it perfectly, meticulously, holy shit Kira really made a time machine. Some of her friends were supportive, most looked at her like she had five heads. Kira had already made up her mind, she was going to go back to that moment and make sure Travis didn’t go to work that day. Or at least didn’t smoke a cigarette. 

So Kira went back. It worked, yeah it fucking worked, she couldn’t believe it, but she had done it. She decided she would have to make sure that past Kira was still asleep when she stopped Travis from going to work, and that wasn’t hard because she remembered sleeping very late, way too late, that day. So as Travis went out to his car in the morning, she saw him earlier through the window, and had to choke back tears at the sight of him. It was unbelievable, but she had done it. She got him back, finally, after all this time, all she ever wanted was there, right in front of her. So she waited until he went to his car, she sat in the passenger seat, he screamed.

“How the fuck did you get out of here before me? I swear, I didn’t even see you get up, what’s wrong with you demon woman–”Kira kissed Travis. She kissed him with all of her passion, all of her love, all of her grief and all of the bullshit she had to go through without him, she wanted to hit him, to blame him, to scream at him, to ask him why he left her alone, express how angry she was with him, and all of this was felt by Travis in the kiss. He was confused, it was like they hadn’t spent almost every night together since they had met, he couldn’t understand where all of this almost terrifying emotion that was emanating off of the love of his life had originated. He would ask that in a bit, after the blissful kiss had faded. 

“Travis, don’t go to work today, let’s go out for breakfast, or coffee, or something…Just stay with me, I need you today, please,” Kira begged, pleaded, it was obvious, but she thought she had been doing an excellent job at hiding her desperation to spend just one minute longer with her beautiful, sort of resurrected, man.

“Baby, you know I have to go to work today. I can’t play hookey every time you want me to bend you over for a couple hours,” He smirked and kissed Kira again. She decided to use this to her advantage, and oh god it’s been two years since she had felt his touch, she wanted him too. It started getting hot and heavy, the windows would have been fogging up if one of them hadn’t already been cracked, and Kira climbed on top of Travis in the driver’s seat. Years of pent up emotions were pouring out of Kira, and Travis was too turned on by how surprisingly ferocious his girlfriend was being to care why she was acting like that, and they made love, the best love Kira had ever known, back where he was supposed to be, with her, close to her, with her. In the heat of the moment, the whole world is being drowned out around because of all of the passion happening between these two people simply in love. Eyes closed, focused on each other’s breath, and the rhythm they are creating together, Kira didn’t notice the knife about to pierce her right between her shoulder blades. Kira cried out, first in ecstasy, then suddenly, pain, she grabbed at her chest, she looked wide-eyed at Travis, who stared back at her with the same confusion, Kira, tasting metal in her throat, turned to her right, and looked into her own eyes. Kira, sleeping Kira, past Kira, Kira that hadn’t lost the love of her life, was looking at Kira, future Kira, Kira who had experienced learning that her boyfriend was blown up into a million pieces never to be put together again, Kira who made a goddamn time machine to go back and hold Travis one more time. This Kira was now bleeding out of her mouth, crying, confused, dying. And she died.

Kira and Travis tried to put the pieces back together after this tremendous affair, they decided to talk about it as little as possible. They buried the strange, other Kira in the backyard; where else would they dispose of the body of a woman who was simultaneously still alive, walking, breathing but also dead as a doornail? They had no explanation for what happened, and they decided to keep it under wraps, because after all, there was still a murdered body in their backyard. They lived for a bit together in something that wasn’t quite contentedness, it wasn’t quite complacency, it was more like they loved each other but also had a massive elephant in the room that they couldn’t tell anyone else in the world about, that they had somehow created together, that they couldn’t bear to part over because no one else would ever understand, no one else but each other could understand. So they drifted, but they stayed together because they felt like it was right, and they knew that they would feel guilty if they didn’t see it out. 

Travis was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer fifteen months after the incident with Kira’s doppelganger. He died shortly after getting sick. Kira grieved, just like she had not remembered doing once before, and then she went numb again. There was nothing she could do to save him from the inevitable. Some things in life are just meant to be, or they just aren’t.