The Stories Of Them

Melanie Rose

|| Melanie Rose ||

She had hair like the sun. Bright and blonde. It went to her hips, but that day it was up in a ponytail. Her porcelain skin was dotted with freckles from hours of being outside playing softball. I’d known her since first grade, when she was bucktoothed and wore her thick glass glasses that made her brown eyes huge. She got braces, and wears contacts now. Her eyes are my favorite thing about her, brown with flecks of gold.

Her hair was up in a ponytail the day I kissed her.

It was pretty insignificant you could say, the day I kissed her. We had been walking home from shooting hoops at the park together. We had reached her driveway and we hugged goodbye, totally normal, except that day I decided what the hell; and I kissed her. It was short, some would say a cheesy goodbye peck, but it felt natural.

But no matter the lame and cliché factors, it was the first lame and cliché kisses of many. Until that one day when the world stopped revolving. The world stopped mattering to me. Every matter of my being was even more insignificant, because she was gone.

It was all of a sudden. She was diagnosed with cancer. Lung cancer.

She lost her sun hair, her skin grew pale, she was no longer able to play softball. She grew bitter, she wasn’t the girl I fell in love with.

“Life fucks us all, Grant. You know that right? No matter what we do, no matter how we try to seduce life, it fucks us all over.”

That was her last good day.

No, this is not the Fault In Our Stars. We didn’t have this magnificent love story.

You see, that one insignificant day I kissed her, she didn’t kiss back.

Unrequited love’s a bitch isn’t it? Yeah, I’d say so. But if you want to try some devil’s advocate, yes she loved me. As a brother, vent buddy sort of thing. It fucking sucks yes. But what was I suppose to do? Be the lovesick bitch when she’s dying of cancer. No. I kept my mouth shut, helped her with her oxygen tanks, and drove her to doctor appointments, the whole nine yards. I did it because I loved her more than the world and I wasn’t going to even consider fucking over something greater that Earth.

It’s not like she was a bitch because of the dumb tumors multiplying in her lungs. She had the right to be a bitch because of the spreading little fuckers. I didn’t blame her. So I stayed. I stayed every single day, even if I wasn’t welcome, I was making her soup. Until I couldn’t make her soup anymore.

She died on June 9. I didn’t cry.

I really should’ve.

But I didn’t.

I was too overcome by grief to cry.

She was a lot of things before the cancer. She was the way the sun rises in the morning, and the way it sets. She took exactly eight minutes to completely wake up. She was a morning person. It was annoying. She went to bed ungodly early. She woke up ungodly early. She was too bright, too happy. She wasn’t sad, ever. She always looked on the bright side of things. She was the sun.

She was a lot of things after the cancer. She was the way the moon always seems to be out, lurking. She turned nocturnal, sleeping all day, up all night. She turned pale. She was so depressed, always looking on the bad side.

She was a prime example of how cancer changes a person.

It was night and day. Cancer was feeling of desperation laying in bed at three in the morning, not able to fall asleep. It was four in the afternoon, too early for dinner, too late for lunch. Cancer destroyed her. She became three in the morning and four in the afternoon. Every look at her ruined me because I had no way to help her; no way to zap the pain away. I felt empty without her sun. I was surrounded by fog every day without her. I couldn’t see the beauty in anything anymore.

She was my beauty.

I should really shut up with the sappy shit but I really don’t give a fuck anymore.

I get drunk every now and then, to not see her face when I closed my eyes. No, she didn’t love me. No, she didn’t kiss me back on that small, insignificant day.

But I loved her with my entire being.

She left spots on me, sun burns. Spots on my eyes, from looking at her too long. She blinded me to life’s cruel injustices, then suddenly took it away and made me face it head on.

Her hair was up in a ponytail that day.

(Written by Kaela and Wendy)