Don't Change

A flash fiction piece envisioning lost love. Can be found in next issue of Miracle.

Skip, skip, skip, sad enough. His thoughts rush away from him in a world of ironic lyrics as he waits for the rest of his life.

He pats the bench in time with his pain summed up in musical poetry he could have written himself. Around him the talentless unmerited go about their trouble less business.  He fights off symptomless sickness with deep breaths and shuts his eyes drowning in stress induced migraine and wondering if this is all there is. He could drift off here and now if his dreams weren’t haunted by resplendence.

He’s been here before; too many times before. He accepts that this is what his future could be. He’s willing to fight it, to become something; to prove them all wrong and himself. Decisions are made and sometimes thrust upon us by sheer typical law.

His eyes open and see the same rain hitting the glass that drove him inside to begin with. He sits on the same bench that bears his collapsible weight any time he finds the strength.

This is all there is.

Rain water runs down the glass as his tears should his cheeks if he found the power to unleash his tension two s**t years have choked on him. This is all he knows: sleepless nights and long lamentable days; languorous in his own right, darling to his advocate. Slipping away in his mind; one mistake away from heaven, but biding his time because his is missing an angel.

Sighs and regrettable exhales like he wants to be noticed. Head down like he wants to be alone. Eyes piercing the glass as he wants to break through it and run away. His reflection looking back at him asking what he’s doing here.

You threw it all away.

Missed chances that he never really had. The same two words in his head: ‘Don’t change, don’t change’. Pain, anger, time is running out.

Don’t change.

Fear, acceptance, resplendence, love, hate, mistakes.

Don’t change.

‘I love you’.

‘I know’.

‘I love you’.

‘I’m sorry’.

I wish I could tell you

‘I love you’.

His maturing hands wonder and find his pale, aging face. They were younger when they first saw hers. They can’t rub away the pain but they keep him conscious.

He hopes he isn’t conscious.

His brain is telling him he is conscious.

His eyes are telling him it lies.

His heart is hoping it does.

His reflection is not alone.

The rain continues to spew down the glass, distorting his failing perception of himself. But it can’t make her any less perfect.

She does not go to him any more than she already has, but stands looking into his eyes with her perfect set. Those luscious brown black-holes he could fall into and not find his way back, as if he’d put up a fight to. The olive tinted cheeks he knows must be silken to his touch, delicate against his own as they let their passion overcome them and explore each other’s bodies. Those artistic lips so fine he himself could not devise them. They do not move into a smile, merely hold their standard position. That is why she is so beautiful.

-Effortless, picturesque.

Don’t change.

He envisions her in her favourite black skirt and tights, with leather jacket he grew to associate her with all those years ago. She still haunts him now she’s out of his life. Her ghost stands a few feet behind his and for a moment they are lost together in this semi-reality. The limbo between stands K and L, his real world and his dreams only God could decipher between for him.

He doesn’t want to wake up. When he closes his eyes it will be lost but her image will still remain. He can’t choose between which afterlife he’d rather fall into.

There is still no movement, only suggested contact between two people heading in separate directions. He knows her heaven is reachable if only he doesn’t stop her. He whispers ‘goodbye’ and closes his eyes. Her face is there, smiling, half covered by her half-done hair that keeps her looking so fantastic, even if she’d never admit it.

‘It’s just you and me now, darling...’

He opens his eyes and the moment is gone. She is gone. He closes them once more.

‘...Forever’.