She never felt like she fit here, on this planet. A kindred
alien finally understood; she nervously faltered as he gently guided her
underneath a double rainbow. And she fought it, as long as she could, until the
water was too heavy to tread, sinking finally, peacefully, into a place where
she could let go of breath. Home. A million and a half years swirled around her
neck as she closed her eyes. Dreaming, she watched him point to the sky,
disbelief spreading across his face, to stars as they aligned. She closed her
eyes and let the deep melody of his voice weave a blanket around her.
"Just before sunset on the ocean, there's a thing that
happens called a green flash, just as the sun goes down over the ocean. As it
disappears, light refracts off the water causing a flash of green in the sky.
I've only seen it a couple of times. The ocean is a magical color of blue
green. Your eyes are beautiful; the color reminds me of the ocean. They are
really breathtaking."
The sun set, against her will. Rough, dry sand slipped
through her fingers as she drew in an unwelcome breath, The Blue Uninvited.
Green flash fading, his roots held fast to his own poisoned
soil. Her own roots, cultivated in similar ground, had drawn her to him;
attraction had been irresistible and unrelenting. Mutual darkness had sought
light in unison, as wicked an illusion as a moth drawn to an open flame. Her
heartbeat had, for a moment, synchronized with his. Their bodies aligned as
perfectly as the stars.
The sunlight is always brightest in the morning, when
vivid, illusive dreams fight to stay alive and heartbeats, for a moment, still
synchronize.
"There's a lot of truth in a bottle of whiskey and a
lot of lies in an empty one."
With the painstaking strokes of ink he touched to her skin,
he carefully swept trust and kindness away, capsule by capsule, as slowly as
the time that passes in the space between the burn of rubber and the shock of
airbag dust. Love is foreign and feign to him, generic in formulary. His senses
feel what his heart cannot validate.
He presented to her the illusion of the ocean and the
stars; she accepted sand. Her own callouses served as subconscious protection
against the sand, dry and rough, as it fell, quietly warning and slowly
slipping through her fingers, as stealthily as a thief in the night. Had she
felt it, she would have seen the pieces: broken glass and sharp rock, weathered
and worn by time.
He sees his reflection in the small, still pond and looks
away, uncanny in his timing, before the touch of a fish distorts its surface.
It was there, though...wasn't it? Yes, of course, of course it was; he saw it,
after all.
No one told her; she didn't ask: yes, you can catch a fish
here--a big one, even, but you can't keep it. They are not suitable for eating.
He knew, by heart, every fish, and when and how often each
surfaced. He knew the ripples this surfacing produced. He had memorized
this, faltering backward, away from the inevitable, rippled distortions.
Eventually, relieved, he didn't feel his feet move
backward; they effortlessly removed his eyes from the deep truth of the water
to the safety of the sandy shore. He perched there, numbly, sinking into the
soft give of the sand: an illusion. Time had weathered the jagged, sharp glass
and lethal shards of rock.
She didn't know the fish there; she did not calculate their
patterns.
Had she looked a moment longer, she would have seen it: the
distorted reflection of him only the fish could produce, a timed touch to the
water's surface. She, too, looked away. She had followed his gaze.
Evening creeps in and spreads like a poisonous fog, quickly
morphing into a hurricane that rips apart her insides. Her hands sweat;
her heart pounds. Foreign fingers and toes curl in a failed effort to soften
the blow as the acrid cloud settles and rips apart the cracks the daylight had
bandaged. Darkness falls; cracks deepen and spread as the hurricane’s winds
turn the water to ice. She is sliced in half, in fourths, eighths, doubled over
in pain, and he is laughing as she bleeds. Only phantom pain exists now.
This vortex shreds her insides, pulling her down, devouring
her soul. She can see him, hear him, feel him hold her; memories flood and
drown her.
She closes her eyes, surrendering to the cinema that her
emotions conjure:
She is back at the barn, in his house, entranced by the
allure of his voice in the giddy phone conversations during their budding
romance. Her heart flutters and swells at the sound of his greeting as she sees
him walking towards her with a bouquet of wildflowers. She feels his arms
around her, breathes him in. They walk, hand in hand, to the barn, fingers
intertwined as seamlessly as the interlocking threads of a well-made woolen
coat: a security blanket. She inhales deeply, welcoming the sweet, earthy scent
of the barn and the horses.
Nighttime shrouds them now, in sweet privacy. Slowly, he
draws in a meaningful breath, absorbing every note of her. His arms surround
her, holding her tightly, safely: synchronous in gentleness and passion. She lets
go and melts into him; lines blur, no beginning and without end. Time stops.
She nestles into the dip where his neck and collarbone meet, her favorite
place. Here she finally found a Home,
safe and warm: the one place where, had the whole world been swept away, she
wouldn't have known or cared.
Suddenly, she finds herself fighting to breathe. The cruel
sledgehammer of reality knocks her back into present time. Her eyes, opening,
reveal the dreadful, familiar, empty surroundings of her car, windows down,
cigarette burning slowly in the darkness of the parking deck at her office. She
remembers…I miss what is dead.
It is gone and she will never be in those places, in those
conversations, in his arms, again. She would sacrifice a limb to shift her
focus to something physical, something tangible that can be explained and
reasoned.
This is why she smokes. It's pain that can be qualified,
explained. She can hold it in her hand and control it. She smokes to
escape, to forget, to remember, and to punish. It's an illusion of comfort that
she can feel between her fingers. It's adding to the pain and it's making her
sicker. But somehow she needs it; she deserves it. If she doesn't smoke, she
has nothing onto which she can hold.
She hates herself for it. She is afraid to look at her
teeth in the mirror. It physically hurts to breathe sometimes. But the more she
hates it, the more she does it.
Why does she avoid rest? She fights sleep like it's an
enemy she is determined to defeat. Nighttime is her time for escape. When she
awakes, she is forced to face reality.
How do you fake the way you hold someone, breathing in
every note with a gentle yet insatiable, unmistakable need?
Lust dressed up, perfumed, synthesized: a false, empty
shell--hollow semblance of love.
A brushfire, swelling and spreading, ceaselessly igniting,
brilliantly illuminating the flecks of fool's gold, abruptly smothers. Twisted,
charred limbs, unrecognizable now, disintegrate with a breath. As illusive and
intangible as a dream, it is gone. She awakens to a faint, distant stench of
burning flesh. Her eyes sting; blinking only brings tears. Rivulets of liquid
agony streak her charred cheeks. Did it even exist?
How do you feign love so convincingly? How do you stop
feeling as if it were never there, cut it off as easily as breaking a feeble
branch, as effortlessly and emotionlessly as discarding trash?
He haunts her dreams, taunting her with his gold-plated
words, a ravenous wolf donning stolen wool, soft to the touch, burning her
skin.
He took them; of course he took them. She keeps fighting
it, unwilling to believe that he stole from her. She longs to hear him, see
him, hold him, but what good would it do? Pandora's box. Sirens. Luring flecks
of pyrite, warning to yield, to stay away, taunt her. "Heart's content is
your strength. You bring softness to the jaded heart. Contempt and distrust
fade."
Nothing brings comfort; no embrace can soothe, no words can
soften the blow of falling, clumsily, repeatedly thrust against the sharp,
jagged edges of this abyss. She is a rag doll.
Screaming, searing pain is silenced: sand in an hourglass,
slipping through, collecting finally, resting, only to be overturned to fall,
endlessly, again, and again.
4:02 am:
Adrenaline and nicotine poison her exhaustion. She is
restless and empty. She cannot calm down to sleep.
She is lost, trapped—unable to sit still but too paralyzed
to run. Her insides are scratching and screaming, begging to crawl out of her
skin. She desperately tries to run away but she can't leave her body. She wants
to scrape out her insides, hollow herself like a jack-o-lantern. Maybe a
lobotomy would bring relief, numbness, peace. She wouldn't need to feel pain
because there would be no memories. Eternal
Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. But then how would she learn from her
mistakes if she has no memory of them?
She didn't realize how many pieces of herself she had
whittled away to fit with him.
She sees him differently now. Light seeps through dusty,
cracked stained glass, bringing a brilliant lucidity that is mixed with the
darkness of emptiness and agony. She is beginning to let go of the illusion of
who she thought he was.
His “home,” a pool house, is rented, the property not his
own. It is simply an appendage of the owner’s home and farm. He lives a
borrowed life; lies can only live so long. The refrigerator is bare; the pantry
is stripped down to the grits and plastic Ziploc bags she had bought him.
He bought her favorite ice cream. She returned to find the
empty pint taunting her, strategically placed atop the trash. He hides,
cowering, as she gathers armloads of belongings in multiple trips to her car.
Foolishly, she went back to him. Walking in with the dinner
and liquor that he had requested, she is greeted with a, “Fuck you! Get your
shit and get out!” He flings her boots at her, and she watches in slow motion
as they land, spraying dust and dirt from the barn. She had, earlier that week,
worn those boots as she sang to the horses to calm her mind on a sleepless
night. Promises shattered, she scrambles to pick up her boots, losing him and
the horses, her only place of solace. Hope is gone. Her ears ring with his
words, a broken record, only days earlier: “Come on home, honey.”
She had unearthed a fossil...
A slight bump, pearly white, attracts her eye. As she
slowly brushes the dirt off the surface, she sees the bones: the hollow, dull
eye sockets, disturbing jut of a dislocated jaw, gaping mouth. She notices how
deep it is buried--the tip of an iceberg. Then, just as she puts her brush down
to look closer, the wind, a whispered warning, stirs a cloud of dirt that
settles over the remains, filling the holes and smoothing the jagged edges. In
an instant, she forgets, consciously choosing to disregard those feelings of
disturbance. She picks up her brush and hesitates, torn between logic and
temptation. Compelled, entranced, she gingerly touches the bristles to the
dirt. Maybe it won't be ugly this time; perhaps it wasn't as disturbing as she
thought. She could have made it up--just her mind playing tricks on her. If she
trusts her hesitation, though, she foregoes the excitement of discovery. But
she has already seen what lies beneath. A glimpse should have been enough.
She cannot look away. Hesitation is devoured by anxiety;
compulsion grows stronger, takes control. And she lets it. She sweeps the
bristles slowly at first then picks up speed, furiously sweeping away the
earth. She should have trusted that tug of hesitation, should have left the
brush and walked away. She didn't want to see it; she looked anyway. The image,
horrifying, discolors her own skin to match the gray of the bones. Frozen,
petrified, she watches worms slither through cracks in the skull. The head is
twisted and detached, unnaturally askew. The ribs are shattered, by knife or
gunshot, where the heart once was.
She punishes herself. Self-loathing swells and festers as
she resentfully reflects on her choice to dispel her better judgment. She
avoids mirrors, afraid to see skin that remains gray. The horrifying truth of
what she chose to uncover disturbs her dreams.
I
awake, coughing, disoriented, clothes adhered to skin by cold sweat. Anxious,
hollowed, robotic, I reach for a cigarette.
