The Big Boom [re-writing]

6:42 am [updated]

We rested on the bed for a while after, spaced apart at first. It felt cold though, inside, so I scooted towards him a bit. He faced me in turn, his eyes slightly swollen, still magnetic in the light, and we stared at each other for a minute or two.

This time was different. This was Christopher unbeaten but freshly wounded for the thousandth time. He was pulverized into bits of grain that accounted for the number of people he saw the story of himself in and for the many versions of himself he had left inside, except this time he couldn't close another death with the mark of a cigarette.

In the past hour, I wanted to ask him, where did Marilyn go?

I drew Dali circles in the wrinkled sheets, on constellation points of Christopher's skin in a way where he could translate it into an answer I could feel at the tips of my fingers.

Here.

Here.

And here.

Would you forgive me, Sarah?

Would you see that what had happened, everything in fact, was a result of horribly deprived people?

I'm imagining all sorts of reactions from you, ranging from absolute betrayal to acceptance to not being able to give any less shits.

Christopher wasn't a lover of any kind, especially not mine.

I didn't want him to be. The scrunched up, disgusted face, two fisted hands look from you or the rolling eyes or the sympathetic, lop-sided grin –I could hold myself back from expecting that now.

Because Christopher was a feeling to me. In that while it was good to feel alright alone, there was a gaping chasm in my chest, hustled by winds, that made me glad he was lonely, too. It was caressing that feeling in between wanting to die and wanting to find purpose in myself that for a while made me go, maybe I shouldn't think in the gray, and then get all depressed again because I didn't know which extreme to choose. Christopher, like so many other people I've come to know, was another shade of that. I was just as insignificant as he was, and that was the part giving me comfort.

Anyway, I knew there was a certain line I crossed. But it was in doing everything leading me to this, the tomorrow that almost didn't happen...it made me feel a bit more okay. You see, I wanted to torture myself and ruin things and feel all the anger I could, wanted it almost as much as I had wanted you to disappear forever or never exist.

I am the people who had the good life but was upset anyway.

But here's to the saying: sadness is sadness and it all pays back equally in salt.

You don't have to forgive me, Sarah.