You called me twice in July.
First when you were checking on things, (whether I had changed my mind). The second time you stuttered, drunk when you told me that you hoped we could try again. You wished for another chance, one more that I could give over the thousands you wasted away.
Your insolence never repulsed me, matter-of-factly, it intrigued me. Your indecisiveness, the lack of stance. As though somewhere between the yes and nos you saw through me. This confirmed the revulsion toward myself. The putative feeling that I had no worth.
You lied about many things. But never on how you felt about me. The simple callous remarks that I was everything -everything that you somehow didn’t want.
“It’s not really about you, you know,” your voice siphoned with the wind. I stared at my phone speaker, hoping you’d change your mind. It happened two months later. Shamelessly, I took you back. Again, and again, until the word lost its meaning…
I remember how it all started. One of those days in February that derails with helplessness. The kind that confronts you with the truth. That you have artistically failed in all aspects of your life, and boldly so. The kind of day when your loneliness nabs you, when time slows down.
Evening came with the soft delicate patters of rain on my roof. If one paid attention, it was a melancholic sound. It clattered and swished with the lulling wind by the open window, its poignance left me holding myself. Fragile arms over the warmth of my skin. The walls crumbled under it, the room felt smaller and caging.
My anxiety was slipping back in and I tried to find a place to sit down and talk to it. I would hide, and chatter about on my own like a deranged person, I would pick on the little nuances of my life until there was nothing to think about no more. Then I would regret the entirety of my past, every choice that made me fondle that sadness.
Along the open road was an abandoned bench, its edges weathered and rusted. The rain had sharpened its rusty edges, leaving a faint scent of metal mingled with the persistent muskiness that seemed to dawdle throughout the seasons. Despite its dilapidated appearance, there was a strange comfort in its familiarity. Beneath it, the grass flourished, a contrast to the bench's decay. I found myself pondering who tended to it week after week, ensuring it never grew tall enough to obscure my cherished sanctuary.
Sitting there, the twittering of the birds in the sky greeted one like music and the wind sifted through the threads of one’s hair. The simpler joys of life, I had come to learn about through grief. It was easier to sit there and assume that life was moving on and I had all the time to watch until I was ready to catch up.
On this bench, I had curved stories of every passerby. I knew about the baker whose wife had left him for a better life. I knew about the widow, who never thought she would find love. Some children dreamed of getting out of that town and men questioned their marriages. Women who had no liking for their children and the occasional one or two people who had figured things out.
While these people, knew nothing about me, that bench had told me stories about them. I had amassed a library of tales, chapters upon chapters, like editions of novels waiting to be penned. Some of these stories even revealed facets of myself that I had yet to fully understand. But there, time seemed to slow to a gentle crawl, and that was something I really needed.
On that cold Friday evening, the sun smiled faintly over the horizon. I sneered back at it, hesitantly. Having left the house as a desperate traveler, the air was revived with hope. There was something in my bones, a new feeling and I was unaccustomed to it. My gaze hovered just slightly over the horizon, somewhere in the distant mountains.
“I don’t like it when it rains,” was the first thing you said.
“Huh!” I mumbled, unsure if you were talking to me.
I was so lost in my musings to even hear you sit there. But right after I heard your voice. I became overwhelmingly aware. Your face morphed before my eyes, and you brightened everything, every single thing from the particles in the air.
“I’m sorry,” you muttered. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”
Blatantly, I stared.
You were a boy with honey skin and mahogany brown eyes. The soft pupils like fuzzy feathery clouds floating in a summer sky. Your hands lay limply by your sides and your face was utterly beautiful. The corners of your lips twisted slightly with a ghostly smile and I figured that you were the quintessence of happiness, you had to be.
...to be continued.
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