Fallen Stars

A Life-Preserver

It's the broken ones I inevitably grew attached to. The ones who the Universe shunned or hated or ignored. Something about their plight called to me; that, maybe somehow, I could fix what the world had begun to cripple. But what had started as a bird with a snapped wing, an under-fed barn cat, or an abandoned baby rabbit, grew restless as the years went on. I was no longer sated by saving helpless, mindless, creatures. I needed a challenge - something so shattered that nothing short of a miracle would able to piece it back together.

Maybe it was the Universe's way of playing with me, giving me what I wanted. Maybe it was a warning wrapped up so tightly that I couldn't see it. Or maybe it was the Universe's one last huzzah before turning its back on me forever.

Not a week later, you stood on my doorstep.

Wet, and shaking your fist at the world, I opened my door to a boy in a thunderstorm. A boy with eyes more turbulent than the winds outside, more haunted than my darkest dreams. I didn't ask what brought you to my home, nor the reason for your twitching fingertips and hardened gaze. You were simply a gift - a broken, tortured gift. A favor from above.

The last favor I would ever be given - not that I could have guessed it at the time.

We spent that day in comforting haze of hot chocolate, old movies, and new friendships.  Neither you nor I wandered too close to why you were there. Broken creatures are always skittish. I couldn't help if I scared you away.

The rest of summer flew by quickly as we fell into something close to a dance. The girl with steady hands and a comforting smile, I would take a gentle step forward, trying to decipher the secrets behind your stormy gray eyes. But the boy with vengeful thoughts and a stubborn jaw, you would always step just out of reach, seeming to want to stay broken. A step forward and a step away. On and on; day after day.

I had begged for a challenge, and I was answered, now all I needed was that miracle.

But the Universe had abandoned me by now. You were something broken I could not fix. Your jagged edges could not be softened, and only served as hooks to pull me in, thorns to ward against my attempts at escape.  At some point that summer, our dance had backed me into the wall. the rhythm changed, as did our steps. It was my turn to step away, to realize you were too much for me to handle. You were too shattered. Too many of your glistening pieces were missing. I had failed.

And yet I was caught.

Trapped in a corner with the boy from the thunderstorm towering up before me, I couldn't - wouldn't - look away. You were still my broken boy. Even as your presence began to overwhelm me, I stepped closer and closer - still trying to find the place I had glimpsed in that thunderstorm. The place in your heart that secretly wanted to be helped. I still thought I could find it.

But as I edged ever closer, my mistakes became clearer, more prominent, with each step. Finding and fixing the core of the problem - at the very beginning - was how I had always done it, how it was supposed to be done. But as I inched closer to the parts I hadn't yet touched, I realized my mistake.

I should've looked for that part of you from the very start. I had been too afraid that you'd have run from me. I saw what my hesitation cost me instead. I had worked to fix what I could see as I waited, but your core was still shattered. I had healed the reaction but not the condition. I couldn't heal the condition, not by myself.

But it was too late.

Your barbs dug too deep into my skin; my way out was too shadowed and laced with thorns to attempt at escape. I was unraveling at my center. I was crumbling. But you were so much my focus that I couldn't see it.

I was becoming what I prided myself on being able to fix. Had I been able to untangle myself from your tentacles and stormy eyes, I might've had the chance to save myself. But your grip was too tight, too unyielding, that even when you left abruptly and I finally recovered from that initial tumble, I still felt the ghost of you all around me.

I could not help myself. The challenge you brought proved too much. Instead of saving you, I had to stop myself from drowning. Because everyone knows a floundering fish makes a horrific life-preserver - it's just that no one ever told me.