I was half out the window, my feet had only just touched the roof of your garage when I heard your voice from within. I still can’t be sure if you had actually spoken or if it was just my guilty conscience playing tricks on me; but I heard your voice.
Good Morning but it’s laced with Goodbye.
The way it shook, like an empty tree branch in the middle of February. Your pleading tone called upon Mother Nature herself, the wind picked up and bit at my skin and rustled my hair. The love letters on the walls were ripped from their places and they fell. Like the fall of all great things, they leave their mark. They left shadows of memories; distorted colours of what once were affections. Images so fleeting you can’t even place trust in what your eyes claim as real. The letters, as they floated down covered the floor, and the dresser, the chair, and the bookshelf. Everywhere; except the bed sheets, where a boy with faltered breathing lay; where the hitch in your breath posed a vague question.
Why?
I know you thought to ask where I was going, and I know you thought better of it. Today was the kind of day the sun never really rises. Not the kind where it’s merely hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. No, today was the kind of day where the sun peeked just far enough over the horizon to decide that today was not worth the effort. The kind of day, where even the consistency of that celestial beauty wavers and you just know you can’t stay.
I always loved the way your heartbeat sounded as the sun broke dawn.
It felt like the world had stopped turning. My blood froze, my breathing stopped entirely, and I was amazed that I heard you ask me to close the window over the sound of my own racing heart in my ears. It was odd the way neither of us made a move; I don’t think either of us moved a single muscle until I made the one decision that brought everything flooding in. I met your eyes. Your crystalline eyes with an ocean storm brewing behind them. More breakable than glass; I remember whispering as they cracked viciously the longer you held my gaze. I know I tried to open my mouth, I know I tried to offer an explanation, but the world was crashing down around us and it was cold.
So very cold.
You asked me what the walls would think now. What would all the illusions I had painted to perfection think of the bullets that shattered their frames. What would the resounding whispers do when they get drowned out by screams; screams always just on the tip of your tongue. What would they do when all the light bulbs go out and the candles have burnt themselves down, in some desperate attempt to keep dancing for the ocean in your eyes.
What of the walls?
You asked me so many questions, none of which I had any answers for. All I could tell you was that the birds had flown away and the wind had beckoned me to follow, and that I promised I would be gone before the day the sun chose to rise again.