-He resuscitated her, the image of her, if nothing else. She had been absent from his mind for years, except for the occasional thought of what if. The thought itself had been so ephemeral that it was hardly a thought. But it was that dream, her resurfacing. Like with most people and events he had encountered in the length of his consciousness, when he attempted, he could never remember them well enough to remember them, simply a vague impression, but in that dream, she was more real than she had been at any point of their material acquaintance. It made him smile an inebriated half forgotten, half wondered about when he woke, smile.
The trap of memory is such that it never allows things to be clear, much less when it’s reinterpreted through a conscious state of inebriation. And such was his state when the resurfacing occurred. By the time his eyes opened again, the last memory to have registered was the previous night’s first shot. A shot of Bourbon. That is however, not to say that the resurfacing did not affect him. He smoked ceaselessly through the Sun’s collapse, filling the living room with a white haze. Like it was being erased. He expected then, at any moment, to become part of the spiraling clouds of white, bouncing off the yellowed walls.
The image flickered in his mind, like scraps of celluloid taped together too many times. The painful scratching accompanying each frame’s progression. The image. Red. The memory of tears flowing, creating tears, in that moment as well, as the Sun slowly collapsed. Her auburn hair, stained red. Blood soaked fingerprints, smudged into the bathroom’s tiling. And how little did he know her. A lifetime together, at his age, sixteen. Her petite body, pressed into the cold bathroom floor. Muscles still twitching, suffocating, dying. And he never saw it clearly, always through the cascade of tears flooding his eyes. If I could have traded places with her, then and now.
She was, to that point, the only thing that had ever mattered to him. A flesh, as if, from his own flesh. A spirit, much like his own. He had asked for her and he was unable to save her.
Once in a coffee shop, an acquaintance had made the comment, “…it’s because you’re an only child, understandably, social situations can feel a bit awkward.” The words didn’t even register, but immediately following the words, he felt a pain. He shivered and his eyes clouded. He just sat there, an awkward smile, as he searched himself, trying to understand the moment. As happens too often with him, he gained nothing more than that shiver and it’s accompanying pain. ,i>It’s all mystery. Now, he can’t even recall how that conversation ended, except that not much more was said. That moment, that conversation is one of the few things he let go of, and really let go.
It’s funny. As his eyes open to the same room in which he’s spent many unconscious moments. It is a little warmer. He’s conscious, there’s a consciousness that is aware of everything he’s been through, but not his active conscience. A pained expression as he stares at the walls, again. There’s a fluttering in his mind, like leaves turning, black and white. His thoughts are mostly desaturated, lacking color; his dreams steal it all.
He feels a dryness in his throat and starts coughing, as if all the smoke from all those nights, creating clouds in his living room, were still lingering somewhere between the yellow. He feels the presence of a past he barely knows and can’t help but smile, another unwitnessed, unremembered smile.
- 56
- 0