Devils and Angels

xxiv. warming souls

t a c e n d a

things better left unsaid

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THE GREY STREETS WERE SOOTY, with fragments of frost that cracked with the definitive kicks of my heel as I marched through the near-empty town. The rhythmic pace was a distraction, and focusing on each step in front of the next instead of my thoughts was soothing, somewhat.

Street lights glinted off the ice lining the pavements; a watercolour myriad, marked by yellow and prismatic rainbows in the impenetrable darkness.

The tears had dried onto my cheeks―invisible tracks, marked by paths of ice that glistered beneath the artificial lights. Salt still lingered on my lips; chapped and chilled, desiring the warmth and intoxication of another pair pressing against it, sparking hope where there was none.

Loneliness had never felt so glacial, after all.

Everywhere was closed at this hour; windows closed, shutters down, and doors locked. People huddled in their houses, with TVs on and lights low; sitting around bursting tables with smiles on their faces. Happy. Pleasant. Content. As if their whole world hadn't been torn in two.

But then I looked at Archie's house―the forbidden emptiness of it radiating off of it in waves―and my heart squeezed in my chest. For certain, I knew of one family tonight that was sick with their grieving, mourning for a person who wouldn't come back.

When I was younger, Archie's family was more welcoming than my own. Every year, I used to sneak out of my house, and knock on his door instead; we'd sit in his room after he finished his dinner, and he'd open the skylight. We'd lie under the stars, legs kicking beneath the same blanket, and he'd trace each constellation with his finger―each one as bright and glistering as the tears on his cheeks when he whispered that his Dad was probably looking up at the same sky, but not thinking of Archie, even if the sky always reminded Arch of him.

Joined at the hip since his birth, we spent our lives together, hands clutched and laughter entwined; best friends, with an unspoken promise to be there for each other if no one else would.

We both fell through on that promise, and though I felt the wrenching, gasping weight of it now, he was the one who had buckled under its burden, and gasped for life long after death had taken him. I was supposed to protect him from that. The weight of the world was never his to carry alone, and my job was to alleviate it off of his shoulders; pass it onto all our friends, because he'd always had our support, but we hadn't been there enough to let him know that.

I considered knocking, but decided against it. For me, now, that house would only be bleached, only his ghost lingering in the recesses. Everything in there was whited out, and only pain writhed on the surface; blood across old sores, painting everything with red.

I was only salt in a wound, and I wanted to save his mother that agony.

She had to clean the wound, rinse and repeat, until the mourning was over, and Archie's memory wasn't so bleedingly vivid; until he was a black and white face in a polaroid, and not so achingly felt in her heart. If that time ever came, I hope she faced it with dignity, because she deserved not to hurt, as much as he deserved to be remembered forever more.

His memory could do no harm, only good, and I would hold it to my heart, always.

I still felt my heart beat firmly beneath my palm, even with the temperatures plunging around my ill-equipped clothing. With my meagre luck, my only hope of surviving the night was swallowing my pride and returning to my mother's toxic tongue and snake-like eyes―my father, and my brothers, all as bad as each other.