I use to be like Summer. A burst of brilliant red like when you bite into a perfectly ripe Strawberry. I stained his lips with my sugar-sweet kisses. Like evening’s Cotton Candy sunsets and blushing clouds trimmed with falling golden light, I was your whole sky, morning, evening and night; you marveled at my untouchable beauty, so close but yet so far. I was a Summer storm, rolling thunder and shattering lightning, electricity running through your bones. I was the pitter-pattering rain, tap dancing upon your room, humming you to sleep, every night you saw me in your dreams and always played them back to me. In your sleep you would see me, dancing far away to somewhere where there was no other-side-of-the-fence, grass was always green wherever my feet touched the earth in between joyful leaps. Where the wind was music in the trees and the grass flowed in fluid motion like dancers caught up in the melody, where the wildflowers bobbed up and down and where the fleeting Robin never left, for there it is always Spring. Yes indeed, I was like wild flowers in mid July, I was the magical meadow tender and warm, hidden away in the pockets of your heart away from the dark, I was a safe haven you happened to stumble upon while fleeing the snapping jaws of the shadow wolves in the Forbidden Forest. Bright and strong like a sunflower, I did not bend in even the most wild wind, and you could lean against me and take in my strength, my untainted, yellow light. Soft and simple but still enough, like a daisy. I made a necklace of my prettiest flowers and hung it around your neck, a most beautiful and delicate daisy chain, my petals kissed and tickled your chest. But I was also vibrant like a Indian Paint Brush, I painted you the prettiest picture, promising passion in streaks of brilliant color, I promised you everything, my roots, my stems, my leaves, my blossoms, everything. And the promise ignited a wildfire within your shivering heart, and spread through your bones, to the black of your eyes, reflecting the fragmented image of me swimming beneath the broken lake’s surface, the white of my skin and the ripple of my hair, you reached into the water blinded, you dug through the sand until you caught me. Oh yes, I was the sunlight dancing on the kaleidoscope forest floor, that you chased trying to catch a handful of light, and I was the fairy circle you wished upon. Yes, I was your Summer.
And as the days grew shorter and the nights became colder I discovered that whenever my mind would wander it would always seem to fall back to you. I remember one night, it must have been in August, the night was pure and honest, and I was caught up in the infinity of the swirling, silver cosmos. My father joined me at my side and pointed up at the sky and showed me the North Star, I had never seen it before. He told me that it was like a compass that would point you home; the lost man’s final hope. Something about that brilliant twinkling star rendered me helpless, I was lost in it’s hypnotizing light. I stared at that star for the rest of the night wonderstruck by it’s beauty and the comforting thought that it knew the way to anywhere you wanted to be. And as the Sun ascended the horizon’s heavenly staircase and peaked in a mirage of smudged pastels for the first time in my life, I felt lost, I felt lost without that star. I all of a sudden had so many questions but no answers, I grasped for sure footing in my jagged thoughts, but was startled to find that you kept popping into my mind, as bright and clear and undeniable as that, stupid, beautiful, bewitching star, and I found myself wondering if somehow, someway, you had become my North Star, the compass that could show my wandering soul the way. And as the world was morphed into view under Daylight’s knowing hands, I realized it was true, you were my last hope, you were going to take me home to a place I didn’t even know, but suddenly was desperately homesick for. And I tried so hard to fall out of alignment with you, to break away from your orbit and run from the galaxy that would soon be us, and the black hole that would **** me up. But I was going up against Gravity, and I was pulled down, down, down.
No matter how I tried, how much I told myself that you were not the only star I could see, that you were not my infinity. But it was futile and somewhere I knew that, I knew that as well as I knew that I wanted you to be my infinity, and I yours. I wanted to create the most beautiful galaxy the Seven Continents had ever seen, so vast and far that no telescope could capture it, and scientists would forever marvel how it came to be. But nowadays, I ask perhaps, If I had known what would happen when the Universe could no longer contain our overpowering glow, what would happen when my North Star exploded? When all I would have left would be memories that would leave a deep scar, but I wouldn’t be able to remember why, leaving me as clueless as I was that first night; when all I would have is whispers that were almost too quiet to hear but would constantly be a murmur in my ear? Have you ever stepped outside and looked up the night sky when the world is asleep and still, but the sky is more alive than you? Have you ever tried to take a picture to remember the wondrous spectacle Mother Nature and the Heavenly Father have laid out for you? You can try all you want, and use up all the memory on your phone, but no matter what you do, you cannot capture the beauty above you. The pictures if not blurred from your frustrated shaking hands, are simply screens of black, with dots of white that could be dust where stars are supposed to be. And you must walk under those stars, to you they shine so loud and clear, they are right there for God’s sake, but you cannot capture their beauty, you cannot touch them. You must endure the torture of knowing but lacking. And that’s what would happen to me when my North Star exploded into whimsical stardust, when you left me in the pitch black; slowly I am being crushed by the weight of absolute nothingness. And ******, even if I had known this is what would happen to us, that this would happen to me...even if I had known all this to be true, I know I would follow you into that unsure, perilous blue where every man is for himself. Because everything is fair in love and war. And even to this day, over a year later, I would retrace my steps back to that night, and let you destroy my horizon, my faith in 11:11, and belief in shooting stars all over again, if only for a glimpse of you, my darling North Star, Pivoting Axle of my world, my Gravity, my Endless Summer; my Infinity.
Because soon it became clear that you were my Summer too. You wrapped your loose ends around me and rocked me to sleep in your makeshift cradle like the hammock out back that we used to nap in, do you remember that? You were the pile of books that I whirl through every Summer under the Weeping Willow Tree. You made me smile, you made me laugh, you made me blush and you made me terribly sad. For even then you were my defining phrase and favorite quote that I felt spoke to me the most. You were the birds in the trees singing their fragile hearts out, you told me of Summers past, and how you accidently went backwards and migrated straight into the darkest winter you’d ever seen and couldn’t find your way out of the storm. And that’s why underneath my daisy chain your heart was laced with icy carnations, that’s why your lungs were filled with puffs of smoke that looked like a breath in the biting cold. And that’s why your lips were so ugly, bruised black, purple and blue, proof of what you’ve been through, and every time you tried to explain your torn past, your lips got worse, your skin became terribly chapped, and your voice cracked as you tried to fight back, but the words eventually bled through your lips, so you learned not to speak, because you hated to bleed. But regardless of your cold words and colder shoulder, you were still Summer to me.You were the fireworks on the 4th of July, you lit up the world and were all that I could see, I couldn’t look away, I was afraid to miss a thing. You were the crunch of graham crackers when you bite into a perfect s'more, and you were the laughter when your marshmallow catches on fire. You were my favorite time of the day, in between night and day, when the sky melts into this glorious turquoise blue, and the silhouette of the pine trees stand out against the fading light. You were quiet and thoughtful, the feeling you get when you sit atop a Ferris Wheel at the the County Fair, you’re a little bit scared, but you can’t help but be blown away by the world below your dangling feet. You were the spike of fear and the adrenaline rush you get when you dive off a cliff into the water, you can’t help but wonder if there are dangerous rocks at the bottom, even though you know it’s too late and there is no stopping your falling body now. But you feel alive, you feel alive and when you survive, you feel unstoppable. That’s the way you made me feel, I was afraid of how much I loved you, how you could tear me apart and push me to the end of the world, and with a brush of your heavy fingertips I would topple over the edge, and I faced the monstrosity of wondering what it would like to be dead, and just before I would let myself go and come to an endless end, you would pull me back up and dust me off, wipe my tears and bandage my bleeding elbows and knees; I was scared that maybe you hurt me just to be the only one who knew what would save me. And I was absolutely terrified of that fact that if that was true, I would still love you. I was scared of you, I was scared of what would happen when Summer came to a end.
I remember I went to California that year for the very first time in my life right before school started. I thought it would be good, to be away from you. I told myself I hoped that you would get bored of waiting for me to come back home and find another girl to give the world, but deep down I knew that I wanted you to wait more than anything. But denial is my thing, as you would soon know all too well, it’s what I do best. So I denied my feelings for you, I denied having any at all. (I still do to this day.) And it was only in California, that I finally realized that I couldn’t keep lying to myself. It happened late at night, as I suppose the most truthful thoughts always do. I couldn’t sleep, I tossed and turned and rolled and stretched but the bed was lumpy and the sheets were suffocating and I found myself slipping away, tiptoeing across the squeaking floor and squeezing out of the heavy wood door, into the fog and sea salt air. I walked for a very long time. I think when people are near the ocean, and have sins they have to wash from their bloodstained palms, they find a friend in the Ocean, someone to hold their hand and teach them how to stand and walk upon water. And that night, I glided to the ocean like a ghost whose tables had been turned and broken, and now finds itself the the haunted one with blistering splinters that it can not see, left over from a world that could not be; made up of broken promises, what if’s and missed moments they can never get back. The Ocean’s magnitude overwhelmed me and neutralized the quiet chaos bubbling beneath my skin. The rabid froth and spit of crashing waves put out the fire that was eating away at me and the undertow pulled me into the blue. I floated through the undefined blur of the the aqua world. I ran my hands through the rocky sand and felt the urgent weight and staggering cold of the water pulling me under, but risking my life in that current among the frothing foam horses racing against the Moon’s tide made me feel so alive. I am no mermaid, I cannot breathe underwater, but for the first time in seemingly forever I had air in my collapsing lungs, and I didn’t know you could drown on dry land until I was dying in the sea. But it was not my time, and I awoke washed up on the scraping sand with water in my ringing ears, knotted hair and no feeling in my blue fingers. I sat there on the diamond sand for a long time until I was strong enough again to lift my arm and slowly I reached into the sky, and grabbed my North Star and pulled it into my heart and where it glowed, I scrubbed myself clean of my history and orthodox scriptures with the salt of the sea and was born again free of frown lines. Something about the Ocean brings clarity, and yes it is dangerous and chaotic, it could destroy the world and wipe us all away, leaving not a trace of the human race, but the Ocean is a lifeboat, a saviour of many in a way. When you find yourself faced with a whole new infinity, a horizon that only ends when it meets another, you are small, and you are still. You are pinned against your past but then can remember how to breathe again, you exhale the toxic smoke swirling in your lungs and inhale the mist. Exhale the past, inhale the future, breathe child-for you are here, no longer there. You are small and you are still but you are real. And that night I learned two of Life’s endless lessons. First; People love what kills them. Faced with death you are flooded with life, it ignites your brittle bones and breathes music back into the silent calamity of your echoing heart. People love what kills them. Second; the person you think of when you stand in front of the ocean. That’s the person you’re in love with. And I thought of you, you, you. I thought of you and I never stopped. And it’s killing me.
But I knew something but really nothing of death back then. So when I got home a week before school I asked if we could meet somewhere in between. And we did. Beneath glaring flick of fluorescent lights in the gas station’s parking lot that didn’t stay any open later than ten, surrounded by everything ugly about humans, rusty pennies, tumbling plastic bags, stomped out cigarette butts and smashed beer cans, you held my hands and kissed me for the very first time, and suddenly, the world was beautiful. We walked hand in hand for the longest time, but found ourselves just a block past the lonely parking lot, by the town’s fountain. We sat there and splashed out feet in the ***** water enjoying the feeling of being. You had brought a bag of Skittles and sorted the red ones from the rest, and when I asked why with a laugh you sheepishly admitted you remembered that I thought that the red ones were the best and that the lemons made my face wrinkle and nose tickle. I poked fun at you for remembering something that silly, but truthfully it meant the world to me, because it meant someone out there was listening to even the simplest things I had to say. And in the fluid reflection of those pool lights rippling across your perfect face, I could tell that even though that pitiful fountain was no ocean, that you were thinking only of me. That night we shot ourselves into the dark like shooting stars and fell into each other, that fateful night was the night we became each other’s North Star. But in the end, no one knows where that star is taking them, they call it a lost man’s compass and the last hope, but if he is lost is his compass not broken, or else wouldn’t he be home? Is hope then of no use? Are North Stars just poetry to salvage doomed souls? I often wonder if, regardless of our faith in each other’s sense of direction, if that night was the most we ever knew each other.
You told me you loved Cheezits, and Lucky Charms with Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. You admitted that you chewed your nails to tiny stubs when you felt to much because all you ever wanted to be was numb. You confessed that you had trouble looking at your dad the same and saying,”I love you,” to your mom and tried to explain why video games were any fun. I pointed out all the scars on my legs and how I got them, whether it was from tearing through my childhood neighborhood on my Barbie tricycle or if it was from running over gravel trying to outrun myself and everything evil that clung to me. I muttered between my hands and embarrassed giggles why I was terrified of fish and flies, and you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe. I recalled for the first time the night mom died and everything that followed that night, awful night that never seemed to end, and with a quivering bottom lip counted off everything th
I'm making a mini series, after months of not writing, not sleeping, not eating & not feeling, the words have come back to me, and it's wonderful. I'm sorry for being gone so long lovlies. P.S I'm sorry it's so long oh my gosh
