The Brilliant Dance
By: Makena
So this is odd, the painful realization
that all has gone wrong.
And nobody cares at all,
and nobody cares at all.
I can’t understand - I don’t comprehend it. How long has it been since she’s been gone? A day? A week? A month? Maybe it’s been a year. Nobody will tell me. I ask them and they all look at me as if I’m insane. Perhaps I am. Perhaps I’m not. All I am is lost - lost without her as a constant reminder, lost without her has my protection; my shield. From what? The world? Probably.
But she’s dead now. It’s not my fault, but I blame myself.
So you buried all your lover’s clothes
and burned all the letters lover wrote,
but it doesn’t make it any better.
Does it make it any better?
I feed the fire I had started with logs, but is now burning with pieces of paper. They are too much of a reminder of her. I pause and read one before tossing it into the fire with the others.
Billy,
I love you! And I miss you - Ireland isn’t the same time. Not this year,
because I didn’t know you the last time I visited my grandfather over here.
I wish you were here... I miss you so badly. I’m considering cutting my
vacation short to see you again. It would kill my grandfather to see me rush
off so soon - I’ve only just arrived, he says. But if it were for the right
reasons, maybe he wouldn’t mind? Maybe he would be happy for me? I hope this letter reaches you soon - I’m sending it in a minute. I miss you and I love you. I can’t wait to get back to the states.
Love always,
Cheyenne.
I toss it into the fire along with the others. I remember when she went to Ireland. She went almost every year to visit her mother’s side of the family. She wouldn’t go this year. She never will again.
God I miss her.
And the plaster dented from your fist
in the hall where you had your first kiss
reminds you that the memories will fade.
I walk into the hall and look at the hole in the wall. I had put it there with our last fight. What had we fought about? I have forgotten - but we made up and everything was okay. It was.
I sigh. It was so easy to remember her when she was here. Why can’t I remember her now? Why can’t I see what I used to be able to see? Her perfect lips, her flawless face and the natural blue eyes that stood out like a pool on a sunny day. I can remember the way she used to play with the silver band on her left ring finger, and the way she would make tea every winter morning and what her favorite kind of tea was. It was Raspberry with a spoonful of sugar. And I can remember her brown hair.
But all of it fades. It starts to disappear as I try harder and harder to think about what she wore and what her voice sounded like.
So this is strange,
our sidestepping has come
to be a brilliant dance
where nobody leads at all
where nobody leads at all
I don’t know what to do with myself anymore. What have I been doing these past days? Without her - what have I done to fill my time up until I went to bed, only to wake up and do the same thing? It’s all so odd - so strange.
And the picture frames are facing down
and the ringing from this empty sound is deafening
and keeping you from sleep.
I walk past a table that had pictures on it. I carelessly flip each frame down so I don’t have to see her face anymore. I want to, but I don’t. I can’t sleep. I thought I had been sleeping, but I’m not. It’s all a daydream - my sleep. I don’t actually do it.
And breathing is a foreign task>br>
and thinking’s just too much to ask
and you’re measuring your minutes
by a clock that’s blinking eights.
I try to push the tears that threaten to fall back inside me. Leave me alone! I scream at my brain. Don’t cry! I can’t even think anymore. Instead, I go to the refrigerator and get myself a beer. I had one yesterday. And the day before. Maybe yesterday and the day before had been today as well? I look at the clock on the VCR as I snap my beer open. It blinking 8. How long has it been broken? How long have I gone around the house, thinking that its still 8?
I don’t try to fix it. Instead, I go back into the hall by the hole.
This is incredible. Starving, insatiable,
yes, this is love for the first time.
Well, you’d like to think that you were invincible.
Yeah, well weren’t we all once
before we felt loss for the first time.
Well this is the last time.
I let myself sigh before I punch the wall again and slide down to the floor. I’m so lost - I’m so confused. I’m so weak.
I begin to cry again and l forget about the beer in my hand. Instead, I take a gun from my pocket and see how many bullets I have left. Three. Tears are streaking down my face as I make a soundless cry.
“I loved you,” I say out loud to nobody.
I had said it to Cheyenne, but she wasn’t there. She was dead. It wasn’t my fault, but I blamed myself. I close my eyes, but the tears didn’t stop. They didn’t trap themselves and return from whatever hell hole they came from. They keep sliding down my face.
I cry harder as I raise the gun to my head. God, make them stop, I pray. I can only cry harder. MAKE IT STOP! I cock the barrel back. I count to ten. I can feel myself pulling the trigger, slowly reaching my own death.
Things fly through my mind in a blur - my childhood, my high school days, playing in a band with Good Charlotte, Cheyenne. Her laughing face is the last thing I can see. I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to desperately hang onto her face. But it’s gone. I see nothing. I’m trapped in my mind. My finger is closer to the end. At any second, the gun will go off and I will be dead.
“God forgive me,” I say desperately.
I take in my last breath. I pull the trigger. I see nothing. I can’t open my eyes, I can’t open my mouth to scream.
I’m dead.
The End.