Bleeder by Shelby Smoak Page A

watch the sky spark and alight with zags of lightning. All is in an uproar.
     
     
    The following day, through the wind and the rain, I drive to see Ana. I’ve dreaded this moment: my heart tightens, my hands sweat; my anxiety dizzies me. I try to focus on the speech I will give. For days, I’ve rolled it over in my mind: how once, I loved her dearly. I loved her for doling out her love to me, for I imagine her love for me as a sacrifice, she throwing her body upon mine as upon a burning pyre. And I called this the ultimate love. But now I cannot breathe for it. The air between us is polluted by my ownthoughts. How it has come to this, I cannot say exactly, but now my heart is empty and cannot be filled by her. I am ending our relationship.
     
    It happens in her dimly lit dorm in the quiet of the weekend night. We are on her bed, where we often spooned our bodies tight together and made promises of hope and love. But now it is different.
     
    “I don’t understand,” Ana weeps.
     
    “I don’t understand, either. It has just happened.”
     
    “What has happened? You don’t love me anymore?”
     
    “I don’t know. Something has changed in me. It’s me. I know it’s me. I’m so sorry.”
     
    “But I trusted you. I put all I had in you.” Ana sobs and sniffles as tears pour from her eyes and then she rushes from the room, leaving me to wonder how to react. I twist my hands together. Play with my thumbs. If I could yank out the guilt crushing my heart, I would.
     
    When Ana reappears with a box of tissues, she sits at the opposite end of her bed, slumps into its corner, and curls her feet beneath her while blowing her nose, wiping her eyes.
     
    “And you waited until you came here to tell me.” She clears her nose again. “Why? Answer me that,” she flares out. “Why?”
     
    “I don’t know. I didn’t want to do it over the phone.”
     
    “Oh, you’re a real gentleman . . . Is that all you can say?” Ana rights herself. “Is there someone else?” she asks. “Have you met someone else?”
     
    “No. There’s no one else.”
     
    “Are you sure?”
     
    “Yes. This has everything to do with me . . . There’s no one else.”
     
    Ana places her hair behind her ear and wipes her eyes, and I feel the event I’ve set in motion. The end of this, of something. My heart sinks into a hollow pit beneath my lungs, and I feel the sudden, gripping fear of loneliness.
     
    “Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing,” I offer in a moment of retraction. “I’ve just had so many pressures on me at school, and it’s been hard to keep seeing you.”
     
    “I don’t think I ask for much.”
     
    “I know.” I am forgetting about all those times I thought differently.“I know you don’t ask for much, but it’s the idea of it. Perhaps I still need space. I want to be able to concentrate only on the things that are at school.”
     
    Ana grips the tissue between her hands. She moves closer and leans herself against me, and I instinctively put my arms around her. “We can take more space if that’s what you need,” she bargains. “This is just too much to take in at one time, and we shouldn’t rush into things too quickly. Besides, I have my own studies and now that I’m working within my major, things are really busy for me, too.”
     
    “I don’t know. I’m not so sure.” I’m growing scared and fear blots out my clarity. Who else can love me as Ana has? Who can accept my HIV? Who?
     
    “We can take some space, become more like friends. If this is what you need, I can do it,” she pleads.
     
    We kiss. She inhales, then sighs out heavily, and rests herself into my open arms. I can feel darkness around me. Everything is unsure, nothing is decided.
     
    “Well,” Ana says, tracing her finger along my hand, “what kind of friends do you think we should be?”
     
    “I don’t know.” I feel the past revive itself. I remember love, happiness, sex.
     
    “There’s all kinds of