The Firework, and It’s Dissipation

A hard, steady rain fell outside as Sofie’s slim fingers ran across the row of jackets. She felt the individual threads and materials slip through her grasp as she passed a cursory touch over each item. She had entered the store originally as a way to escape the rain that had come out of nowhere. The building was small, they had rebranded the second hand store to be a vintage clothing shop. Sofie smiled thinking about this way to upsell items, her smile hidden beneath her navy mask. It was strange how quickly things could change. They could spend years being one thing and then in the blink of an eye they could change into something completely different. 

This store had once been called a thrift shop, and it had been so for years; just a huddled collection of stale smelling clothing. Then one day new management came in and named it a vintage store, now it’s aisles were cohesive and it smelled of well worn leather. Lights that were once fluorescent now casted a beautiful orange glow. The walls that had once been a dull grey, now showed exposed brick. The rust red rectangular prisms were all stacked on top of each other, separate pieces connected to the whole. Some of them looked brand new, and others looked as if they had experienced a hundred years of constant abuse. Sofie wondered how those bricks that had been through so much were still strong enough to suffer more pain.

With this thought, Sofie decided to leave the warmth of the store and go back out into the coldness of the street. She didn’t have a rain jacket with her, only a green canvas one to help aid as a slight wind breaker. Her hand paused slightly as she reached for the door. 

“Hope to see you soon!” One of the cashier’s called out. 

“Thank you!” Sofie said, pushing open the door and stepping out into the cold. 

The street outside was empty. The entirety of it was blocked off from road traffic so that people could safely walk around without being afraid of getting too close to others. However, the street was devoid of people. It was an empty shell of a possible salvation for the local businesses that were losing income. Sofie walked into the street without looking around her and sought out sanctuary from the rain underneath a large awning in front of a permanently closed store across the street. 

Underneath the awning she took off her mask and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She put one in her mouth and lit it, breathing in the nicotine fueled head rush. She caught a glimpse of herself in the darkened window of the building she stood in front of. The orange glow of the cigarette casted a light against her face that had all of a sudden become older. She was only twenty-seven, but it looked as if she had aged ten years in an instant. Her eyes began to show the signs of crow’s feet. Her face that used to hold a childish youth, now looked like that of a grown woman. She wondered how all of this could be the byproduct of one year. A year that was so full of hedonistic pleasure, but containing a consequence of self destruction. 

It all started the way most doomed romances do: she met a girl who at face value appeared to be her soulmate.

Sofie met Destiny a year ago. She had been working as a barista for a coffee shop for a while at that point. The building was quite large, and there was ample space for the many customers who came to live out a small moment of their lives. The place always had the sweet chocolate scent of fresh brewed coffee, and the savory buttery taste of the fresh baked pastries. Sofie loved working there, it had been her safe haven from her grad school work for a long time. Though for the entirety of her working there her work friend Matthew had been trying to get her to go out drinking with him and his friends. She had continually declined until one day after he asked she finally gave in and said yes.

The bar that Matthew had chosen was a loud cluttered place, one where you could only hear the guitar of the cheap cover band that was performing. When Sofie saw Matthew and his friends she walked over and was immediately stopped dead by the woman sitting next to him. Her hair was black as a moonless midnight, her eyes were lightning blue, and her lips were painted the color of blood. There’s times in life that people can almost see the future unfold. The attraction that the two of them shared in that moment was one that was all encompassing, devouring. It was a flame that wouldn’t be able to be sustained, but would engulf the two of them whole. 

After Sofie’s first drink, Destiny asked her if she would like to go outside for a cigarette. 

“Of course,” Sofie said. She didn’t smoke, hardly drank, but for some reason she would do anything this woman asked of her. She found herself filled with a feeling of euphoria as she spoke to Destiny.

Sofie had missed so many opportunities for romance within her life, it seemed to be her inevitable curse, but as she smoked with Destiny the future seemed to be wide open. She had played it safe for such a long period of time, that she thought it was time to make a drastic change in that moment. There, smoking cigarettes underneath the starlit sky, she knew that this love was something that was going to be intensely exciting and viciously cruel in the end. Something that would be comparable to the fireworks she used to watch through the living room window on the fourth of July as a child. Bright in one moment, extinguished the next.

Even though she knew where it would go, that didn’t stop her from pursuing it. They started to date and once the pandemic began, they moved in together after only dating for a month. She quit grad school, was later fired from the coffee shop, and talked very little to anyone other than Destiny. Sofie never gave into her self destructive tendencies, but with Destiny she couldn’t help it. Their lives became each other’s, their cluttered apartment becoming a nation of their own ruling. A country that was separated from the whole. A nation that had held peace for a small time, soon became one that civil war campaigns had been constantly waged against their fellow sovereign.  After a year the spark that had bound them died, and the firework had finally dissipated. 

Sofie left the salvation of the awning, entered the darkness of the rain, and returned home. She knew the relationship was over when she entered their apartment to find that the lights were off, and Destiny’s things were gone. She turned the light on and looked at her reflection in the window that stood over the bed they shared. Sofie found it hard to find the person she once was in the face that looked back at her. It appeared that she had aged another five years at that moment. She was one of those damaged bricks, one that she doubted could ever be strong enough to suffer more destruction.

Though it wasn’t pain she felt in that moment, but relief. She knew what the relationship would become when she entered it, but that didn’t stop her from trying to not give into her most primal impulse. The instinct that told her to self destruct. The desire to destroy the things around her. The need to alter parts of herself that appeared unchangeable. However, that was over now. She no longer felt the need to feed that desire she kept within herself.  Now she could finally return to her old self.

In the end, everything was only for a time.