It happens as quickly as it ends, a muffled slam and a splintering of cracks.

Night has fallen quickly, the dull glare of the streetlights hidden by the blinds.

I barely stir when it happens, only waking when footsteps race past my door.

“What’s happening?” I ask groggily, surveying the urgency of my parents.

My brother replies “A car crashed through our fence!”

With both excitement and terror.

I plod to the back door, pressing my face up against the glass.

Sure enough, there it is; A scene of grotesque beauty.

The once sturdy concrete fence is shattered, its still standing pieces rocking

Back and forth in the furious winds that whip up the storm of betrayal.

 

My phone is laying on the nightstand where I’d left it

Hours before I’d settled down to sleep off the animosity that spiraled

Out of control after reading that terrible message.

I retrieve it to capture the strange enigma of the crash, scoffing at the

Messages that remain unread.

Are you mad at me?

Delete.

Why are you avoiding me like the plague?

Ignore.

This was never how it was before.

 

The house is silent. My brother’s gone to bed.

My parents and I sit in the living room, listening to the wail of

Sirens as they scream by, chasing some invisible evil that continues to evade them.

The show on the TV is quiet, the characters’ voices whispers

As I peer through the windows at the gaping wound and observe

The silent metal beast and the destruction it wrought.

My parents are more interested in what’s going to happen,

Darting from window to window to check on the men

Who stand by the car and converse almost casually, immune to the

Chaos of what’s already happening.

 

She’ll come back to me, he says to my friend

When I was never his in the first place.

He rubs salt in my wounds and asks if I like it,

Cheering my opponents on and pretending like he didn’t.

He’s obsessed with beating me and I can never figure out why

Because best friends are supposed to support each other.

My eyes are as green as the jealousy that personifies

His terrible personality and his even worse character and I wonder

Why on Earth I ever decided to let him in.

 

Eleven o’clock passes as silently as its predecessor as we wait

With bated breath in our living room still and stare

At the debris littering our once pristine backyard.

The shimmer of glass shards sends shadows through the windows,

Illuminated by the dim streetlights overhead and the flash

Of the photographer’s camera.

My parents send me to my room.

It will be okay.

 

Sulfur and ash characterize the remnants of our friendship.

Neither of us are willing to pick up a broom; Him

To try and piece it back together and me

To sweep it into the garbage where it should’ve gone long ago.

Neither of us was willing to acknowledge the hole in our bond

Until it all came crumbling down.