Seventeen

𝖝𝖛𝖎. death was chasing you?

I have loved her for many reasons.

       From the beginning, she had been the sanguine, cherry-mouthed, nighttime daydream flawlessly laid flat on the framed canvas. She basked under the pearly moon, dipped in twilight and shuddering with disguise: for once, I couldn't read between the lines, but there was a hint. Solaris was an ode to broken promises, sullen affairs: something so unwanted, yet still implicated. Her smiles were calculated, her laughs, her. She was a clever girl, but never clever enough to save herself. Her love was a velveteen ribbon, stemming deep from her lungs and through her throat and in the midst of her choking, she had found me.

      On day one, she had told me I'm Solaris, no smiling mouth, no lively soul: Solaris. Flat, cold. I'd like to think that it almost reminded her of how her Papa would say it, but I never asked. I never got the time to. However, I did have the time to see her unbecoming. We took off the masks four days later, laying atop of the grass with tangled limbs and sunlit skies, stretching blue in its canvas quality: she sweetened the air, I think. I loved her all through December.

'Do you think there's a God?'

'I don't know, Sol.'

'Do you think someone will be waiting for me when I die?'

'Don't say that,' I told her. 'I'll save you.'

'Don't say that,' She said. 'You won't.'

'I think I'll die trying.'

       'I'd never let you do that for me. You know that.'

         'I know.'

         A corner of her mouth lifted, a grin so unfamiliar to me that it trickled down onto the linings of my stomach and fluttered so  sharply. I held her hand, left liminal spaces, kissed at her scars. Yet, here I stand, crying by her open casket with empty hands and my name written on the silk of the coffin. Solaris was a catharsis, a summer bonfire, a poets muse, a photographer's model—you'd never forget her.

She's been chained around my mind, the pink tissue in my brain is stained with her light. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but if you looked close enough, you could still see the green lakes spiralling in her irises, startled with restrained emotions. Her face was the canvas of overwhelming pain, her smile was the residue of sorrow— everything she did was entangled with ache. I almost couldn't breathe each time I looked at her. It hurt for me, too.

An earthquake hits my chest, breaks my heart in the centre, and I wish I could have contained it, but the chasm grew too quick and suddenly, I couldn't breathe. I knew I was crying.

Her pretty eyes are closed, she's wearing a white dress that she would hate and her sister pressed a painful kiss to her cold head— I loved her. She's dead. But she almost looks peaceful.

I've always been good at everything, but I think I had been the best at loving her. There was never joy to her, no peace, no atonement. She dragged chains with every step she took, she wore masks like a leper. Water, church, God— they could never purify her. It was an open casket that I stood beside with empty hands, but full words. I couldn't understand why she had done it. Or why she had done it without me. Solaris died of suicide, the same way she had tried to die many weeks ago— she overdosed on the pills that were supposed to make her better. To Solaris, I'd like to apologise for her thinking she had been alone, when I had been here the whole time.

I could still hear her voice: you're my favourite, there had been many things that lived in my head before, but none of them made it into a home like she did. It felt like hell, her death— it felt like losing and gaining everything all the same, but the gains weren't ever good gains. It's an initial shock, a shock that hit so hard that the numbness overtook the pain, but beyond those walls of nothingness, you can hear yourself screaming, but you no longer recognise the person who does. No pain, no guilt, no fear is like it. I couldn't save her, and I had tried and tried and tried and tried to. It's a painful feeling, knowing and knowing but not being able to ever do anything.

         There is no Hell like it. Mostly because, for the first few seconds—or days, or months—you are numb. It's the shock that starts up one vein and cuts it, splits it in half and fills it with whatever drugs there are that completely release you from sensation.

          Everything stops.

          Everything.

          People ask and you can't say because you feel pathetic. I don't know if that's normal. Is it? I hate not knowing things. I hate this feeling. Or the lack of feeling. I wanted everything to stop but my brain cuts off where my lifeline is. My limbs live in silence.

           But she's loud.

Then that splitting feeling in your veins isn't so numb anymore. Nothing is really numb anymore. Maybe you're dying with her.

Maybe you're just dying.

           There is nothing you can do. Do you cry? Laugh? Would she want you to?

            I think it'll be like this forever.

            But I only think, I don't know.

            But I really hate not knowing things.

            I hate not knowing if she's at peace now. I hope she is. It's what she deserves. She could've been at peace with me if she gave me the chance.

           Finding a love like hers is rare, I'm
sure— she was a morphine dream, a ball dance in quicksand, a house with no mirrors— everything strange but good. For a time, I wanted to find something that felt like home. Strawberry bushes, lavender cologne, dandelion seeds— nothing felt like home except for her. A promise, a lifeline, she was rotten to the core, but if you'd look close enough you can see the candy floss residue resting on her soul. That's probably what rotted her. I wanted to be loved so hard that it split me open. I guess it did, but not in the way I've always wanted it to.

       I've loosened my grip but she's still at my fingertips. I dreamt of her on the first night after she passed, she braided roses into my hair and told me I'd be fine, that living life without her was the life worth living— but I couldn't disagree more. My bones ached at the sight of her in the field she seemed to fit so perfectly in. She told me if I survived, I should braid flowers into my hair and feed myself well. Every word she said pecked at my heart's tendons and I could feel her kissing at my head, marigolds growing at where her lips left, she was too sweet in this sense and I could tell she was finally at peace. There was a peach sky, a happy her and a tulip field. She's finally sleeping.

It's just not right. It's just not right that she's gone.

          But I think I'll be okay.

          (you only think, you dont know)

          I've never gotten the chance to tell her that you are my favourite, too. I guess you do die before you break. Despite it all, I could have sworn we were evergreen.