The Sibyl

Prologue: First Kiss/Last Kiss

As he pulled me down into his lap, I was reminded of the uniqueness of our friendship.  That I could have performed the exact same action on him and neither of us would have found it unusual.  That we were able to accomplish within our comparably small relationship what was still unaccomplished after centuries in the whole of Western civilization.  We were equals.  There was no sense of dominance or submission.  No sense of gender roles or sexuality or effeminacy or masculinity.  No male or female...just us.

And it was at that moment that I realized: I loved him.  Looking up into his eyes, I knew.  He was my soulmate. 

My mind harkened back to a thought I'd had as a child which developed into a philosophy I still held—that a "soulmate" doesn't necessarily have to be a lover, that hoping for sexuality or even age or geography to align might be too much to ask for.  That soulmates might never meet or that they might not be destined to be "in love"...only to love one another unlike any two people could. 

And we did that.  John and I loved each other in a way I'd never known two people ever to love.  It wasn't one of our calls in the earliest hours of the morning after one of us had a nightmare; it wasn't during one of our spontaneous butchered renditions of "Bohemian Rhapsody" whenever we were driving together; nor was it the day my aunt passed and he'd held me...just held me.

It was such a silly thing—being childishly pulled into his lap, with me pouting and him chuckling.  But that was the action that broke something in my mind—that tilted a final scale or nudged a final gear into place.   With my head in his lap, his hands on my shoulder and waist, and my hair splayed on the arm of his garage-sale Lay-Z-Boy in a dim-lit and badly decorated studio apartment, I knew.  No one could ever fit into the space within me in which I now found John.  He was there and if, through some cruel circumstance, he was wrenched away, I would be broken forever. 

I suddenly felt a familiar fear blossom in my chest.  It was the same sort of fear I'd had as a child when my mother was sick and I'd prepared myself for her death, the same fear I'd had when my aunt was diagnosed with cancer.  Staring up into bluish-brown irises, I felt both a heady panic coursing through me and a surge of bliss traveling up my spine.  It was so dichotomous and unexpected.  I vaguely wondered if this was what it felt like to be on drugs—if somehow it were possible to have a good and bad trip at the same time.  I considered asking him.  After such a momentous epiphany, of all things, that would probably have been the first thing I said.  If he hadn't kissed me first.

It was my first kiss. 

That night, roundabouts 2AM, when I got the call from a mutual friend, that's what I thought about.

 His lips. 

As I frantically got into my little black economy car, I turned the idea over in my head.  Over and over.

 His smile.

As I sat in the waiting room, I thought about it.  I stared at the white wall, surrounded by sick children and a few soldiers from the Army proving ground who had been a little too close to something classified, staining their uniforms with their own blood.  The light was too bright, the smells too sterile and infected at the same time.  I looked at those soldiers' hands and saw a thinner, bonier pair. 

 His hands. 

When I held his mother as she soaked my shirt in tears, I thought about it still. 

 His laugh.

  By then, the panic had ceased, as if someone had put the brakes on abruptly, pulled me out of the metaphorical car and sat me in the dirt to say: "Elvira.  It's over.  If you don't breathe now, you never will."  So I breathed.  I clutched to his mother's shoulders as if to comfort her when I really wanted to crush anything in sight.  I held on and barely held back.  And I thought about it.

 His eyes.

I don't think the weight of it truly hit me until I went home the next morning, the sun lazily rising over the painted-blue mountains, orange rays of light cutting through my window blinds and slicing my eyes like knives.  I sat on my couch for Lord knows how long.  My muscles ached from some unknown activity.  My head throbbed.  My eyes burned.  Somehow, though, I didn't mind any of it.  The pain was like background noise—there, but not the focus, unnoticeable in the cacophony of everything else in my head.  I was exhausted and drained, covered in the tears of three different people, but none of them my own.  And none of them his. 

I was numb.

I could still see his bones jutting out of the junctures of his limbs.

        I could still hear his last breath.

I could still taste his lips on mine.  And I could still smell his blood.

It had been my first kiss...and his last.