Photo by Ridwan Muhamad Iqbal on Unsplash
I’m sorry for not catching you, my friend of many adventures. It was a beautiful sunny day, perfect for vacation, and the kids wanted to leap from a waterfall. You always were a mountain goat. We had our cameras, me a new digital Canon and you an old school film variety, now ruined, trying to capture one daredevil daughter swinging from a rope and a son, standing back, afraid of heights.
When I looked over the cliff, your flip-flops floated beside you, turquoise bottoms facing up in the dark green water. Your beaded and sequined rubber flip-flops were the last thing I saw when you tumbled backward, falling thirty feet to the rocky shoreline. You were staring up at me, blood trickling from your nose. I could hear the rush of the waterfall and people around asking, “Is she OK?” You were silent, but somehow smiling, your orange-pink lipstick smudged across one cheek. Why didn’t I reach for you?
Doctors tended your cuts, cracked rib, fractured foot, chipped tailbone. “I’m so sorry,” I said.
“I’m fine,” you said. “I’m fine.”
After your visit was up, and you limped from my house, I found your bejeweled slippers in my garbage, both tongues dislocated, yet still cupping your phantom foot. I pictured your orange-pink smile looking up at me. It never changed. Not when you slipped. Not even the second before you started free-falling. Not when you looked at me from the rocks. I should have looked beyond the smile. If I had, would I have seen something shift in your eyes? Would I have dropped my camera and lunged for your foot?
I’m sorry, I said again, and you hugged me.
The next day, when it was time to put the garbage cans by the street, I rescued your shoes, brought them back inside, and placed them on a shelf of my favorite books.
Even now, long after you’ve healed and we’ve gone on more adventures, I’m sorry I didn’t catch you. I’m not a better friend.
Kim Steutermann Rogers spent a month in Alaska as the inaugural fellow at Storyknife Writers Retreat. She was recognized for “Notable Travel Writing 2019” in Best American Travel Writing. Her science journalism has been published in National Geographic, Audubon, and Smithsonian; and her prose in or forthcoming from Bending Genres, Centifictionist, Emerge Literary Journal, and Hawaii Pacific Review. She lives with her husband and dog in Hawaii. Read more of her work at kimsrogers.com and follow her on social media at @kimsrogers.