Gentle Apathy

I don’t know what you’d call it-fate, or innocence, which drove that night to where it ended. If I close my eyes I am still able to make out the distant twinkle of stars as the heat rose visibly, wrapping around the darkened canvas of sky, blanketing the evening. The moon stood visibly amongst its ivory companions, distinct, yet colorless, shining brightly above my head as though personally singling me out, even with the forms which surrounded me, who moved in sync as though choreographed to do just so. Much of the time I had been forced to shade my eyes from the intensity of the lights in the maze of the town fair, and most of them had begun to blur together as one grand blob of electricity. The half-murmured, loud-bellied fractions of social interactions passed around us, leaving our minds, for the most part, blank. Our feet ambled on when our mouths could not, as we found ourselves at the mercy of the glorious beast that was the Ferris wheel. I sucked the thick air into my lungs as my heartbeat quickened beneath my chest whilst the multicolored brightness filled my eyes.

            “Wanna go up?” I’d asked abruptly, as though the wheel had set off the devil within me, daring me to take risks I’d never taken before; do things I’d never done before; take chances with people of which I’d been too frightened to take.

            He had shrugged nonchalantly, and led the way behind my two best friends, who were both gossiping of a faraway someone doing a faraway something, whilst my imagination sped faster than my youthful heart.

            And we soared up to the sky, leaving all but our hearts behind.

            Everything felt as though it were moving in slow motion, and I noticed it all. The breath of wind as it cooled against our heated cheeks, the creaking of metal as he shifted and shimmied against it, causing us all to screech and yelp in delight. We were on top of the world, in the darkest quiet, seemingly miles from the nearest gravitational pull of which would direct us back to where we had begun. I remember imagining floating in the air forever, high above man-made structures and frescos, the claustrophobic boundaries which walled us in from ocean to ocean. Suddenly his silence broke through my thoughts.

            He had never been an awkward duckling when it came to socializing. He merely kept to himself, never outlandish or crude, as I had noticed upon our first meeting, in the midst of a swollen winter evening nearly three years ago now. Remembering is such a malicious capability, and yet I am even able to see now, clear as day, how he had been standing on his own, staring down towards his overgrown feet, allowing our words to wash over him as a wave of curiosity shadowed his face. His hair, crusted with blonde streaks of lightning atop the russet tint, stood up in the front as stiff as tin soldiers at ease. His lips were thin and relaxed, brightened in contrast to the fairness of his skin. From the moment I had trotted over to him, grinned like I’d won a million dollars, or maybe a new friend, inquiring of his name, I knew we’d be close. And we had been. For the longest time.

            I glanced beside me to where he was seated, gazing out at the fairgrounds as though he were completely lost in thought, while the expression on his beautiful face remained unreadable.

            Nudging his elbow gently I asked, “Hey, you. Why you so quiet?” A smile played at my lips, as always when I spoke with him.

            He turned towards me, and although I’d known him for years, his eyes still set me aflame, lighting up my night. A deep hazel connected with mine, swirling me into the deepest abyss. Returning my smile, he motioned towards the ground.

            “It’s beautiful. I was just memorizing it,” he spoke softly, as though hoping not to disturb the silence.

            My heart had trembled a bit as I secretly wished for the motion not to disturb the sound of my voice.

            “Don’t go.” The worlds tickled my tongue like a whisper, barely recognizable as my own. I watched him as he shook his head slowly, upturning his lips in a sad smile for only a few moments, as though he were having a mental battle where he was both the oppressor and the oppressed. I moved closer to him, my bottom lip grazing his ear as I whispered it once more.

            Again, the shaking of the head, but this time accompanied with a muttered, “it’s so complicated. Things are just so complicated.”

            I knew not to press on the matter, for I understood that nothing I would say or do could make it any better. The top of the world had ended, suspended far longer than ever possible in one’s mind. But for months following, it’d be all I’d think about. The skyline, the movement of the air passing through us. His eyes.

            Just then, stuck in that moment, it were as though I could sense nothing-not the happiness, not the touch of the ground beneath my feet as we reconnected with the earth, nor the ability to taste the bittersweet tang of a summer’s end before me. His words crushed my heart more than I had expected, and the harsh aftertaste caressed my taste buds. Sonnets of the evening grew around us as we, again, ambled about restlessly, farther and farther into the bustle of people. As I flowed steadily beside them all, my heart stuttering like a bird with a broken wing, I wondered why God hadn’t allowed humans to read minds. Why God had allowed second chances, but no firsts, where everything was forced to be on the line, all or nothing. Why God, in all his beautiful glory, hadn’t granted me what I ached for the most-time. If I were able, I would have used all my strength to grasp his skull, penetrate the maze that held his mind a captive, and study every piece of construction which shaped his thoughts.

            As my inner intellect attempted to construe what had just occurred, and what was soon about to, the rough pad of his palm grasped mine, dragging me into his arms where he then swayed his hips and mine ineptly in tune to the notes which spilled from speakers on plastic tables.

            And then, quicker than I could take a breath to fill the silence, it was over.

            Time flew by after that night, and even now, my heart yearns for something much more than what he had given me. Flashbacks always cross my mind, but there’s no possible way to think back so far, to replay the moment he ‘died’. I’ve never been able to conjure up the strength to picture the look that had struck my face as I received the information, or the look of my mother’s, as she watched me clutching my numbed body, shudders racking through me as my throat opened, and the dreadful sound of heartbreak spilled from my lips. My legs had given out from beneath me, causing me to slip to the ground as my mother’s shouts overtook my cries. Tears blurred my vision as blood pooled in my mouth, thick, acrid.

            Time, something I had so recently craved copious amounts of, had become irrelevant. Snapshots of fear in my sisters’ eyes, the wide-eyed wonder in my mother’s, mere hours later, as she allowed the receiver to slip from her grasp, and the words “he’s alive…” jumped from her tongue. Hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as a violent wind crept past me. I couldn’t stop gaping at the whitewashed walls before me, as I thought, “why, why,” echoed through my mind like a regulated heart monitor.

            Even now, the goose bumps still rise on my skin as I think so far back to that forsaken evening. Even now, I search for clues and hidden meanings beneath all of which he had spoken to me for as long as I’d known him. Even now, the verity of that summer’s sensation remains bitter upon my tongue, as it’s all he had left to me to believe in.

Author's Note

Honest feedback.

Reviews

[Winslow Des Totes]

I'm going to tell you something that someone wrote to me that really helped in the long run. Opening this page leaves me daunted by the size, perhaps you could add more space between the paragraphs so as to make it easier to follow. :) Hope that helps! :) I'll still read this later though, and give you more honest feedback then!! :D:D:D

[livinglifeloud]

I am practically crying this is so good and it brings back so many memories. Your words are amazing. Send this.