Running From The Darkness

Part One: The Move

It's always best when it's over, when the chairs are disordered and the sobs are heard further and further away from the crucifix. The truth always seems most prevalent in the eyes of the ten persons sitting scattered about the room staring at the blank space where the coffin was.

They're rarely ever family members, mostly exes, from a past long forgotten, old friends with broken hearts over foolish arguments praying for forgiveness, wishing they had answered the phone call two months ago. They'd soon make their way home, flustered and screaming at themselves, mentally of course, over never taking the opportunity to apologize. I hate funerals, but I love the dead, I always imagined that persons who died over 40 had tons of stories to tell, years of heartache for which to be grateful or to regret, often the latter.

I love stories; I often woke up with a feeling that I was living through a story someone had written years ago, some teenage girl with a broken heart or an old lady with a cruel past. I was almost always the protagonist, but on some days I was the narrator, standing nearby telling stories, creating characters, loving and hating them, destroying them one misused word at a time. I didn't start writing a story of my own until after the funeral, when I stood staring at the space where the coffin was, looking around at the nine people scattered about.

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6:00 am

"Locs like tree
branches, beating,
breaking, broken.
Becoming nothing but
twigs to be stepped on.
Please, let me protect you."

Closing her notebook she pushed it aside to make room for her folded arms, eyes hidden within the spaces between them, forehead perched on her right wrist. No day was better than Saturday; waking up , writing, glancing at the clock and going back to bed, but sadly it was only Tuesday. With an hour to spare before leaving for work she figured she'd spend half of it picking out underwear, "when it's pretty, I feel pretty, when top and bottom match I feel hott" that's what she'd tell her mother for the past 3 years as she rushed her to the bathroom with only 30 mins to leave. She was always on time, never early.

7:05 am

This was the last day she'd catch herself staring out of the driver side window, marveling at her neighbor jamming out to what can only be Michael Jackson's "Thriller". The last time she'd take a midnight ride to the rusty fountain where she had her first kiss, reminiscing on how terrible a kisser Jesse was, writing poems she knew he'd love to read, the last time she'd borrow her father's car, as in exactly 10 hours she was to be-

"... successfully adulting?"

Arielle had completely zoned out. "Huh?"

"I asked how you feel to be successfully adulting. You weren't listening to me huh?"

No more early morning phone calls with Leon, her friend of only 2 years, but already a very important person in her life, he called every morning and demanded that she talk to him her entire drive to work, insisted that she look like a crazy person to every person driving past her car on the highway. "I look crazy Lee, as far as everyone is concerned, I'm talking to myself, they don't know that you're on speaker, I look crazy", was her openning sentence everytime he called, however, about a week later she grew accustomed to the raised eyebrows and pointed fingers of judgement.

"I'm at work now. Got to go, love you snooks."

"Wait! You didn't answer my question!"

"That's because I'm not successfully adulting and probably won't be for like 2 years lol, don't forget tonight a-"