We have this thing where if we get too close, our heads explode and we die.
I go, “I’ll live underground, you live aboveground. The layers of dirt and rock will make sure we don’t die, okay?”
She goes, “I love this idea.”
I grab a shovel and start digging. I dig and dig and dig until I’ve dug a beautiful life below the earth’s crust. My underground house has an underground pool, underground WiFi, an underground brewery, and everything else I’ll ever need.
She does the same aboveground—massive gardens and various bodies of water and fireflies and mountaintops and you name it.
We connect two tin cans with wire and talk, talk, talk, all day, every day. She sends me ingredients from her garden and walks me through recipes for pastas and curries and soups. I tell her how delicious it all is even though I fuck up on, like, step four and almost burn down my underground house. I get drunk and sing sad songs to her. I close my eyes and picture her face, eyes, hair, and smile, and in my mind, her head doesn’t explode.
Then, I don’t hear from her for a while. Then a while longer. Then so long that I worry something bad has happened. But I don’t risk going aboveground because I don’t want her head to explode. I don’t want my head to explode either, but if I have to choose which of our heads to save, I’m saving hers.
I go, “Hello? Hello?” into the tin can every morning and one million times a day.
Nothing.
The man in the moon tells me to sleep. While I dream of exploding heads and broken hearts, my limbs turn into roots that spread and spread until I can’t see my fingertips. Bark blankets my chest, neck, and back. Moss grows on my body instead of hair. After a millennium, I wake up and see my branches touch every living thing on the planet. I wake up as the tree of life.
The man on the moon tosses me down a six-pack of beer and goes, “Welcome back!”
We get drunk and tell dirty jokes and threaten to kick each other’s ass and cry over how we wish Robin Williams was still alive.
I ask the man on the moon, “Have you seen her?”
He smiles. “You can’t miss her.”
When her first ray of light touches the leaves atop my head, I hear her voice.
She goes, “Hi.”
She climbs up, up, up. I strain my neck to see her. Her brilliance is blinding.
I go, “Morning.”
She goes, “Good morning,” warming the soil and the wind and the waves.
I say, “You’re the sun.”
She says, “Weird, right?”
I tell her no. I tell her it makes perfect sense.
We talk, talk, talk, all day. Neither of us explodes—the millions of miles keeping us safe.