The shades of the sky have become one in the night. It’s late, too late to be running down the dank county roads of a small southern town. The dogs bark ferociously from the fences, as if they’d do anything other than sniff him when they got close. Still, they keep up appearances and scare him into a second wind as he barrels through the black, illuminated only by the moon as his guide.
He’d always been fond of the Moon. She always tried to reinvent herself every few days, waxing and waning to his pleasure and aesthetic. Unlike the wretched Sun, too stubborn to change in his undying light, trying to show how bright he is and the warmth he brings. Without the Sun he would be dead, but without the moon he could not love.
He is drunk. Perhaps he’d have put on socks to save himself the blisters from running in shoes clearly not made to run in, were he of sober thought. But he is drunk. And so, the pains in his feet were a distant whisper, while only being five feet and ten inches from his ears. Even if he were of clear mind, the ache in his heels were a drop in the ocean compared to the burden in his chest. And he is drunk. Too drunk to remember she’d want him to breathe, or even how to heave his lungs, to pass the oxygen into his heart. Only she could do that, only she could make him work properly, only she could make him want to breathe.
His pace slows. His breathing catches up with him as his body ventilates the carbon dioxide and ushers in fresh oxygen. He is strong, in mind and body, with a unique understanding and thought process regarding both. He is not vain, but when he appreciates himself he does so thoroughly, indulging himself to remember the good for when he inevitable looks and experiences the bad. He is quick, having reached over halfway his destination, but for now he must walk, he convinces himself because he must remain clearheaded for what’s to come, but it’s truly because he is honestly tired.
He has been tired for many a months. He has been locked away in a cold room for the for crimes which was far too severely punished with nary but a thin blanket to guard his white skin in the late of winter. He has felt the sting of death sharp in his heart as an arrow shot by the best friend of his childhood in the middle of spring. And it’s because of these things that he walks down this road in the late of summer. It’s because of these things that he became vulnerable. Prone, more so now than ever, to the regular ailments of the modern adolescent.
Love, to be concise. He fell in love. With her. A young gal with whom all of the right pieces fell into place. Her heart became a heart, a place for him to hang his hat, a place to feel warmth amidst an icy life that had come down on him in a hailstorm. It does not matter how they fell in love, only that they did, and that she’s the reason he could not sleep although he was so, so very tired. She was the reason he began writing love poetry and being sweet and being as an obedient puppy. Before she became his life raft he was drowning, she game him life.
And now, again, he is sinking, this time with uncertainty. The love in which he found solace is now teetering out of balance. The foundation on which he stands is cracking, like the path on which he is now walking.
He is close now and he can feel it in his bones as the adrenaline shakily rattles his skeletal structure. His skin is shivering, in spite of the hot, vapor soaked air. He is close now and he is crying because he knows he is powerless to change anything but he had to come anyway.
It had been perfect. There is no other way to describe it. A mere month stretched to an eternity of love and kissing and laughing and joy and hugs and everything good in a love worth sharing. It had begun with coincidences in similar tastes, it then resonated with a passion exceeding all others, and now it ended in death. Perhaps it wasn’t truly perfect, but only storybook perfect. A beginning, a middle, and now…
An end. To the road. He reached it. Her home he stood before. It was late, far too late for this, for crying in front of one’s home in the dead of night on a long county road, for standing, drunk, waiting for whatever was going to happen. He had done his part, he arrived to where his lover lay her head and it was up to the world to finish the story.
She wanted it to end. The reason why is not important, only that she did. She gave him a reason, but it was a lie. She refused to give him honesty, and perhaps herself. For this, he was betrayed. He deserved the truth, to know why. And that is why he now stands before her home.
And then, there was a flash of light. The moon appeared from the doorstep, golden hair glowing in a bun, clad in fuzzy pajamas and her arms folded. And that is when the sun died. He shattered into a red giant of tears and exhalations. She came close and he could feel her breath on his, seeping into his pores and sent him spiraling down. She reached out to lift him, and he held on, like a shipwreck survivor at sea clings to his buoy.
He was drunk, and so as he rose he stumbled, and for a moment the Sun and the Moon spun, a celestial swing dance that pulled him apart, she the Moon and he the Sun and waves, unable to match the ebb and flow of her heart.
When footing was regained, a deafening silence ensued. He knew she could smell the whiskey on his breath but he did not care, he only cared to know,
“Why?”
The word was met with nothing but shy looks to the Earth. She did not know why. But he did. Because this was the only way it could end, in perfect death.
“Just go home.” His moon muttered.
And so, the moon went on through her cycle, waxing and waning for a planet full of he’s. All while the red giant sun collapsed in on itself and turned black, a hole devouring his entire being. And what did he do when the angelic moon finally spoke? He turned around, and began to walk home.
