February 2020

The Great Gatsby

Book: The Great Gatsby

Written: February 10th 2020

Posted: February 11th 2020

Word Count: 724 Words

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The earth is moist about me, crumbling against my fingers, and I cannot move from the weight. Dirt fills my mouth, presses against my cheeks and seeps through my closed lids. This place is timeless, distant from the mortal world, separated by layer upon layer of earth and wood. A thousand prayers and the apathy of an entire city separate this place is from that unsatisfying mortal world.

My memories of that place are faded and dull, and often I wonder whether it is memory or fantasy that plagues me, of perfection in dark hair and a voice too rich as to make the body ache. In the memory/fantasy, I call her name, now long passed from halls of recollection. In the end, she did not love as I did. Love was not as passionate, heartbreaking, eternal, pure, all consuming for her as it was for me.

This fantasy of her perfection, even faded and tattered, is tainted. The taint of death, the taint of ill discovery, the taint of deepest sorrow. I remember giving her up, giving her away, the taste of her lips is the bitter sorrow of my memory.

A single afternoon is not broken, when us two waited in a living room, the silence awkward and tense. He had left, embarrassed by my fear and child's nervousness, and in my fear I followed.

He sent me back, my Nick – his name is the only one still clear in my mind. Nick, who did not approve of me, but still did his best for me. He did not belong in the city. If truth is told, not one of us did, though it is in the city that I foolishly wait for her. I remember Nick because he was to only one to attend to me. "Wait a half-hour," he said to the vicar, but he, and I, and perhaps even my father knew no one was coming.

Even she did not come.

That afternoon, after Nick had fled into the rain, I though we had recaptured everything. Here in this earth, though, out of time and out of the mortal reality, even one as stubborn as I learns wisdom.

She sat on the couch, and said to me, "Where is Nick going?"

"Out," I said.

"It is raining," she said. "He is kind, my Nick."

We said nothing.

All of the years, for her, for that moment, and we found nothing to say, nothing that would breach the gap between us, until,

"Do you love me still?" she said, her face turned to watch the rain pound the glass windows. A reflection of a raindrop dripped down her cheek. "Can you hear the thunder?" she said, and her voice was quiet in the unearthly cackle of the skies.

"Yes," I said.

More drops fell on her cheeks, deepening her eyes in a black mask, and her cheeks grew rosy with blood. "I love you," she said.

I was happy. No, that is not the word – I was ecstatic, euphoric, flooded with joy and the sudden perfection of my spirit. She was mine again! My love, my beautiful love, and my soul aches still for her.

I went to her, and lifted the tears from her cheeks, careful not to further the damage to her unneeded makeup. She let out another sob, and I slipped my arms about her. I let her cry.

"I love you, I love you, I love you. Only you, now and always, now and forever. My beautiful, my lovely, my precious, precious," I said against her hair, over and over, until her sobs quieted.

"Come away with me," she said. "We can go away, and be happy."

I smiled. "Come away," I said.

Then, the crash of movement from the hallway, and we jumped away.

Nick came in, and someone said –

"It's stopped raining."

She was beautiful.

How quickly she forgot.

For so sweet and short a time, it had stopped raining, and all was well.

My only sweet fantasy of her, who has no name. I long for her, in this earthly barrow, but I am content without her. I no longer will weep without her, for the cold earth makes all wiser. Even me.