you can't know
there's no stamp
for people
hiding in plain sight
we'll fool you
looking as benign
as a plain window
but
just barely
hanging on
making the wrong
choice
every time
cracking apart
with
each misstep
bargaining for
anything
that might hold us
together
but every thought
is a speeding
bullet
you can't know
until
you know
I watched her face glow behind the red embers of her cigarette as she pulled the smoke deep into her lungs. Exhaling a smooth stream into the darkness, her skin returned to a shade of porcelain reflecting the moonlight.
She licked her lips as she stared at the smoke floating away from us. Her mouth twisted as she caught me staring.
“No lectures today about my health?”
Kelly’s eyes were soft, a shade of maple syrup with flecks that sparkled like the stars. But the night made them gray.
I let my gaze fall to the beer in my hands, picking and peeling the golden paper, revealing a slippery, green glass bottle beneath. I held it up between us.
“Who am I to lecture anyone about their vice?”
I tipped it back to my lips and let the bitter, crisp tang wash over my tongue before swallowing several times until my head swam and the bottle was empty.
I cracked another open before looking at her again. Her hair was parted with a zigzag and twisted into two haphazard knots. She’d tucked the wispy strands of pale blue that had escaped behind her ears. It made her look younger. Vulnerable. Sexy.
She lit another cigarette.
“We don’t have to do this right now.”
Her voice was tight and crinkly, like a Mylar balloon being filled too full. I winced and tried to turn away, but her fingers slipped around my jaw as she scooted closer to me.
The concrete felt like an ice cold promise beneath me.
“You don’t have to decide anything, Will.” She swallowed, tracing her thumb over my lip, then lowered herself to her knees on the sidewalk beneath my feet. Shifting between my legs and tossing her cigarette in the grass, she took my face in her hands. Her voice went up like it always did before she cried. “I don’t need anything from you. Just let me love you.”
A tear slipped down her cheek.
I closed my eyes from the weight of everything. I could pull her against me and lose myself in the dog-eared comfort of us, our story written on pages too fragile to be erased and rewritten. I could…
I opened my eyes as she dropped her fingers to my chest. “I can’t, baby. It would be like-”
She pushed me, rising to her feet. Glaring down at me, her nostrils flared. “It would be like it should be. It would give us more time. It would-” her voice broke and with it, something in my chest burst.
I sagged forward, staring down at hands that had crushed her heart without even holding it. Fingers that had skimmed over another woman’s body, held another woman’s face, made another woman shudder with ecstasy.
“I’ll forgive you!” The volume of her voice made my head snap up and my eyes dart around the empty street. “I will change. I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
Her sobs cut her pleas into confetti. She fell again to her knees, wincing this time, but grabbing my shirt and pulling herself against me. “Please, William, please. You can’t do this! You just can’t do this to me!”
I’m not a cruel man. I never was. I could have stayed that night, chosen to do the “right” thing. And maybe we could’ve made it work.
But as I pulled her up and held her tightly, I saw my life, my future pass before me. Months or maybe years of mistrust. And the quicksand my infidelity had trapped me in would eventually suffocate me.
She sobbed into my chest as i tried to find purchase on solid ground. It was the first night of many that I would hold her and will her to be ok. Without me.
But the one thing I didn’t think about that night was loving her.
And that was all I should’ve thought about.
Her hair is dark violet now. Straight and sleek, framing her beautiful face like a piece of art. She stopped smoking and started running.
With him.
For him.
I watch her now, every evening, pass by the park where I proposed.
Sometimes, I can’t breath, her happiness hurts so bad. But that’s my fault.
It’s still my fault today.
It will be. Forever.
She was as beautiful as a precious gem. She sparkled in the sun and glittered in the candlelight.
The warmth that shone from inside her was mesmerizing, but if you picked her up, she was cold and hard, with sharp edges that made her difficult to hold.
He didn’t mind. He polished and protected her, wrapping her up and keeping her out of sight of others who may admire her beauty and try to steal her away from him.
Had he paid attention, he would have noticed her inner glow diminish, each time he locked her away, blocking the sun from feeding her.
Had he looked closely, he may have seen the tiny cracks that grew, each day, as she was left to try to manufacture her own light, instead.
Had he witnessed them, he might have figured out that she wasn’t the stone he believed her to be at all.
But one day, as he sat polishing and admiring his prize, he did see one of those imperfections, and held her to the light to examine her closely.
The flaws he saw were startling and significant, causing him to drop her to the ground… where she cracked into pieces.
Nothing but a bit of glass. Not created to impress, but molded to fool, ensnare, and hold captive.
And HE was the fool who had kept her, trapped inside, for so long.
Once she was free of her shell, she soaked up the magic of the sun and grew more beautiful than you could ever imagine.
She took on the fiery attributes that fed her, dancing and swirling with such magnificence that all he could do was stare, and wonder at her extraordinary new form. Before looking away, baffled by what he couldn’t comprehend.
“I didn’t know,” he cried in despair.
“You didn’t try to know,” she said softly, watching him sadly for a while, before gliding out into the lovely light of day.
As she skipped and danced and revelled in her freedom, she found a different world around her.
People watched her, others joined her, many delighted in her in a way no one ever had, while she was trapped within that capsule.
She basked in the pleasure of an audience, enveloping herself in it at every turn.
But, when the sun set, the crowd disappeared. And the darkness pressed into her lightness with a fury.
Suddenly, drawn to the edges of the shadows, she was overtaken with need. Some mysterious presence magnetized her, as though the fire within her was molten steel.
Out of the blackness strode a new admirer. Strong and capable, with eyes that she knew could see everything, and a sadness that was almost enchanting, in it’s strange, taciturn way.
He leapt on her, like a beast of the night, drinking in her light and feeding off her power.
She did not fight him, but begged him to continue, to devour her, to reduce her to the quivering, mewling mess she’d never known that she always wanted to be.
When he had his fill, he lifted her and cradled her, whispering sweetness and love, and promising that his darkness would never overcome her lightness. Then he carried her into the sunrise, so that she might feed on it’s magic, forever.
“I am but a broken diamond, flawed and discarded,” she warned, longing to avoid the despair she had caused, once before.
“You are priceless, my precious gem, and I will guide you to see that truth, as you have guided me into the light.”
MelDouleur.com 