Stand

Bright Morning Star

By Grace

Prologue

I am on the bus. It is a bumble bee.

Outside it’s brisk, it’s fresh. It’s morning. The clouds are part of the sky, and it’s all glowing.

The bus is empty and it is quite, but it’s sweet.

There is one boy there. One boy in a black jacket with a black hood.

He is listening to his ipod and his eyes are silent, searching for anything. Anything to hold onto.

He is lost. He told me. I know that boy. He is mine. His eyes keep looking for something... for everything. But he only looks because he is lost, not because he wants to find something.

My heart becomes a drum, and it beats when I am around him, but it falters and it wears into a faint, empty, broken whisper. because his eyes tell me a story.

His eyes tell me of a boy. A mystery that makes me desperate to fix everything.

He is not emo, he is not depressed. He is drowning. In secret.

I know.

This boy is mine.

~

It's crowded now.

It is hot and loud, but so much more desperate now.

I sit next to a girl. We laugh.

The boy is forgotten. He is in the back. He doesn’t talk. Not really.

I am gone now. I’m  lost and it's worse now because now we're broken.

I’m a monster because I’m drowning too and I have a life jacket on, but I only watch the boy. I watch the boy in the black jacket sinking right next to me. I have another orange puffy vest, but I am just watching the boy, my eyes fake and vacant. My eyes break now, too and they become part of the sea. And I cry.

~

There are people here today.

I step into the yellow bug.

He is not there.

~

The sun is melting into the bumble bee now. In the afternoon my hair is frizzy.  And I hate myself for caring.

I am standing here. I'm blocking people behind me. I think people think I’m tired. That's what I tell them. They don’t know what’s wrong. I’m not going to tell them how scared I am. how dead I am.

My throat becomes thick and my heart begins now, it’s afraid and it flutters.

I shake my head and I make my heart beat again. Something strong.

I put my foot in front of me and I make it stay.

I walk and I can hear my steps. Echoing. I can feel the bumble bee shaking beneath me, rumbling. It’s waiting to fly again.

My hands grip onto the straps of my backpack.

I am not me anymore and I don’t know what I am doing.

I stop in front of the boy.

He doesn’t look up.

I sit down and I smile. It’s real.

He looks at me and he smiles.

Maybe it’ll be ok. I don’t know.

I am so close to dying.