Dreams Apart

03

Years into the past

C

ollateral beauty. How can tragedy be described as captivating harmony?

How can beauty— an evoking sensation that makes one be at awe be attached to damage? I didn't understand then, but after witnessing my life spin like a kaleidoscope caught in a whirlwind with each fragment shifting unpredictably, I get it.

"Collateral beauty, kid. Collateral beauty." I remember the cigarette in between his lips burning slowly. The fleeting spark being the only beauty to my eyes. His gaze was distant as if he had been searching for the beauty he spoke of in the cracks of a broken world.  

Ronald was a strange man, a man of very few words when he wasn't intoxicated with drugs and alcohol. I only ever said a word or two and thoughtlessly bit my lip at the silence.

I tried to find beauty in tragedy the day he spoke of it, but I was met with deafening wails from Kimberly. How is there beauty if there is pain? How is there admiration if there is hate? Where was the beauty he spoke of? I searched for it that day, I tried to but–

"Your parents' aches have been identified in a cabin." At that moment, I was certain that beauty didn't exist in tragedy. However, I still searched for it, in their eyes, the very same heavy eyes that bored into mine the day when they took us in.

I was met with hollow emptiness in Diana’s icy orbs, while an untold truth cracked beneath her eyes. Then I searched Ronald’s eyes. There was an intoxicated guilt that surfaced in his golden brown lenses.

"Angela?" Diana whispered sharply, her voice echoing numerous times at the back of my head. Her pale nails digged into my shoulder, pulling me into a cold reality that sent shivers throughout my skin.

"I know this is hard, kiddo, but remember what I told you?" Right, collateral beauty, Ronald. I scoffed, the abrupt sound evoking concern from the two. Diana shifted her gaze to her husband, trying to gather what he had told me.

"Which part of it was a cohesive beauty, Ronald?" My voice cracked as it poured out of my lips.

"... was it the part they left, or that they were set to flames?" I asked, feeling my body pull away from my frightened soul. They didn't utter a word,  I recall the silence being the only harmony to a tragedy. I turned away, lifting my feet slowly but desperately trying to escape a nightmare that found a way to prey into my reality.

The silence was broken, and my foot lifting came to a halt. "We are yet to tell Kim." Diana's voice was careful and even delicate. As if I'd break if she were to speak with her unwavering tone that cut prey.

That day marked everything.

It drew the spiraling kaleidoscope, the medication, and the haunting nightmares. It lit a dimming light upon the truth, one that I still chase in the shadows of my nightmare.