When the World Ends

Photos

She carries with her a yearbook. Three, actually. And she also carries the raspberry colored Polaroid camera that I had found and given to her as a gift. A craft store, in ruins. A camera, unbroken. And I had scavenged for film, and found an abundance, but still: only the singular unbroken camera. A gift, a miracle.

   She takes pictures of all the good she sees, of all the people who live and are not dead inside. She takes pictures of me, of animals that have survived, of families and children. And she hands them out to the people who she takes then of; she hands the children who look so sad the pictures of a puppy, or a bunny, or a small deer, and they smile at her.

   She hugs the yearbooks to her chest. She reads and rereads the messages written to her on their back pages. Sometimes, she wears a sad smile; other times, she will laugh. Most of the time, she just simply reads them, for month the words silently on her lips, her hand clasped into a fist and pressed against her chest. 

   Directly above her heart, as if it physically hurts.

  
She wrote a haiku in her planner before it all ended. It was called "Loneliness". She never was much into poetry, but she tells me that this haiku seems the most true to her.

   It goes like this:

                       "This is loneliness,
             You're surrounded by people,
                        Yet you feel alone."

   She says she thought of it at school this year, because she felt alone even when she was surrounded by her friends. She doesn't feel that way anymore, she assures me--I never make her feel that way. She wonders why she ever hated me.

   I was the class clown. I tried to be funny, to be friends with everybody--it annoyed her, though. I'd go up to her just to annoy her and the friends around her, to make them laugh, but she was the quiet kid. She wanted to be left alone. Maybe, if I had allowed that, we would've been able to become friends from the start. Maybe we would've had longer together.

   She tells me that we were both at fault, though, and there's no use honking about it now. We're as close as a family; she asks me, sometimes, to read her messages to her when she doesn't want to read them alone. She says she misses her friends terribly, but only the ones that mattered. Only the ones that cared back.

   Ah, but the boy. She misses him so badly it hurts, she says, and she doesn't understand quite why he seems to matter to her so much. She says constantly that she hates him for all he's done, but she now forgives. And she wonders aloud if she is still in love with him.

   There is a difference, she tells me, between loving someone and being in love with someone. I was in live with him, but now, do I simply only love him? Do I even have that?

   I watch her  have this constant internal battle for a long time. She brings up the topic at least once a week; if she doesn't, I do. I want to help her resolve her issue, but most of the time, I cannot help. This is a battle with her inner self. 

   Finally, when she's ripped the papers out of her planner and sealed them in the envelope, she tells me the subject is resolved. She says she does not need an answer, not anymore. I wonder if that means that she thinks she'll never see him again. Is that why it doesn't matter?

   But she still clutches the area above her heart whenever she reads his messages. 

   And so I can only wonder.