when i first met her she spoke mostly of death. her own, again and again - as if the repetition would make it come faster. she would stare at me with wide
angel blue eyes.
they screamed, piercing. she was like watching a fly trapped in too many water droplets gathered along a winter windowsill. perhaps this is how i developed the irrational behaviour of
fly search and rescue in the winter - mass slaughter in the summer.
she was perhaps the oddest person i'd ever known. i had never been in the company of someone who seemed so content with the idea of fading away. this is how i learned just how far a pair of steel toed boots into the ribs
because the dishes were not clean enough because the tv will always be too loud can push a person. she is how i learned to feel like this.
too much.
no one, i remember thinking,
should ever want to die before they are even sixteen years old. i learned to hate him, the fiery passion they talk about in trashy romance novels - only, this was anger. i was so furious with him for simply being
alive.
i do not think that either of us were given a choice.
i loved her until i nearly forgot myself. i am quite sure there are pieces i will never find again.
loving someone like her is one of the most self-destructive things anyone can do. i was thinking today, with the sky overcast and the air so indecisive, that i needed a little clarity. more than once i've been questioned as to how i could love someone like that, still, with all the things she has done - and this is why.
this is my clarity:
i can't stop. there is something about a person who still manages to love, after it ends. i do not know how she could see past his fists and his boots and those words - she refused to hate him.
it is just that she will never understand how much she means to me. it is just like loving a wall because it is too late and she can't believe now that there is anyone who could feel this much for her. i am sad, for stretches - days
weeks, knowing that this much of me is simply one way, dead end. this feeling will never find its place. wondering how often this will repeat itself during the course of my life.
please, do not ever do this to anyone. it does not matter how angry or tortured you are - no one deserves to be kicked or beaten or made to feel as if
the one man in their life who should love them unconditionally, does not care at all.
there is nothing that feels more empty than this.
not one thing.