cloudy skies

Her world is ending. 

She stares down at the phone in her hand, the horribly familiar feeling of numbness flooding through her bones. The same feeling when her uncle got the call from the hospital. The feeling when her boyfriend told her that they needed to talk. The feeling that’s caused by the three simple words on her screen.

He’s dead. Overdose.

This numbness feels different somehow. Not slowly creeping up her spine, freezing her body until it’s choking her. Not sudden and ice-cold, hitting her like a surge of water.

It’s more subtle, an aching numbness that belongs to someone who’s experienced too much grief in their life. Someone who knows what comes next, the torturous, pain-filled hours that will fill the gap that he’s left behind.

The emotions that governed her childhood, her sole companions throughout most of her life. 

The emotion that was evident in her uncle’s face as he put down the phone, anguish in his eyes that even a young girl could recognize.

The sorrow that polluted the cold air as the coffin drifted by and was lowered into the dirt. Burying him away from her. 

The emotion that led her to think that every knock on the door was him, coming home and the distress when it was someone else.

She couldn’t handle it. 

She had been nine years old and parentless. Lost in a sea of grief, slowly sinking beneath the waves.

She was drowning in her own emotions, slowly being buried, like her father in the ground. 

Until he came. An angel in disguise, a friend when she most needed it. One who stood by her side, through breakups and more funerals, supporting her always and unconditionally.

He knew her, sometimes even better than she knew herself. 

He knew what it was like going through a loss. He knew what it was like to be drowning under dismal thoughts, and how bleak it was. 

They stood by each other, pulling each other out of their seemingly bottomless wells. 

He was the light at the end of the tunnel. He was the sky at the top of the well. 

Her life was made up of countless memories, some happy, most sad. But almost all of them were with him, and each one made her world a little brighter and brought the sky a little closer. 

And now that piece of her life was gone. 

No more drives to Burger King to get Red Velvet shakes and overpriced onion rings. No more making fun of his amateur photography and how he was going to ‘make it big someday’. No more receiving Lego sets as presents and spending the day building them like they were eleven. 

So many grievances in her life. So many tiny fractures in her that cracked a little bit more moment by moment. 

Before he was there to keep her from falling apart, keeping her together. Before he was there to help her get through the numbness. Before - 

A flash of blue appeared in the corner of her vision. Her hand tightened on the steering wheel instinctively, her phone dropping into her lap.

The world seemed muffled out, a blanket over her ears. The girl took a deep shuddering breath in, the first in what seemed like decades. 

Something slammed into her car, flipping the gray Toyota Yaris - a birthday gift from him three years ago. She had been furious, shouting at him for spending so much money. He had just laughed and danced away tossing her the keys gleefully. - into the air.

Random wisps of thoughts and images floated through her mind, and she reached for them desperately, holding on tight, afraid that they would fade into nothing.

His laugh during stupid romcoms; the specific way he made prosciutto and mozzarella sandwiches; the songs he listened to over and over whenever it was his mother’s birthday; the way his dark hair lit up in the sunlight.

She sensed the car turning, something crashing into her chest. A pain through her arm. A burst of agony up her right leg.

Snapshots of her life flooded her memory, most with him. Flashes of tiny movements that no one saw but her, pieces of him she never noticed until even now, tiny motions that were uniquely him that the world would never see again.

His quiet reassurance by just being in the same room; the way he cracked his knuckles when he was bored; his fierce loyalty that radiated from him; the brightness in him that had saved her.

Her mind was foggy, and it was hard to think or put together a single thought. Echos of indistinct moments rang throughout her brain, merging with the dreaded three words over and over.

The Toyota slammed into the ground, rolling over repeatedly. The world came rushing back to her, filling into her ears again with earsplitting noise.

Shattering glass, honking horns, people shouting faintly. 

Watching clouds in the sky on warm summer days. Studying silently alongside each other for quizzes. Playing with her turtle instead of working on their history project on WWI. 

For the first time, the girl felt an intense throbbing coming from her chest. The rest of her body was bursting with pain, but she couldn’t focus through the murkiness and fog clouding her head. 

Her vision straightened gradually, and she stared at the puffy airbag that had inflated, bright red instead of blinding white. 

She feebly reached for the door but was met with open air. The car door was gone, and the only thing keeping her in place was her seatbelt, strapped painfully against her aching chest.

She felt for her seat belt buckle and realized that she was upside down. The girl fumbled with the buckle, hands slipping on something wet. 

Unbuckling it sent a blaze of pain through her arm. The pain throughout her body added to the hazy confusion of her brain, colors slipping in and out of focus. 

Thoughts swam around lazily, slipping out of her reach each time she tried to grab for one.

Her body moved on autopilot, trying to awkwardly slide out of the car. Her back cried out as she scraped across the asphalt, tiny pinpricks of pain coming from the shattered glass on the ground.

She managed to make it halfway out of the totaled car when her body gave out. She couldn’t move. Her legs and arms were stuck, and shifting any part of herself sent fire up and down her spine.

Everything was numb. Nothing worked. She was broken.

Watching bad horror movies and finishing off 20” pepperoni pizzas at 4 am. Late-night talks on the rooftop of his college apartment building. Racing each other on bikes through the park every other Saturday when she could take a break from work.

The girl heard shouts coming from other cars on the highway. A faint siren sounded in the distance, or maybe it was just her imagination.

She couldn’t think straight.

She raised her eyes and looked up at the sky. It was pale blue, with perfect white puffy clouds - too perfect for what had happened today. 

He would’ve loved watching those clouds. He would’ve scrambled to get that cheap camera of his to take mediocre photos and then plaster them in the walls of her room. He would’ve wanted to lie on the busy highway with her for hours on end, ignoring the noises of the awaiting cars, just the two of them, watching clouds go by like they were 4th graders again.

Another wave of fire ran through her body. 

Everything hurt. 

The girl knew she was supposed to cry out in pain but she couldn’t. 

She just didn’t care anymore.

She was supposed to cry. She was supposed to scream for help. She was supposed to break down or do something. 

But she was broken - she had been since she received that text. 

Her world was ending, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

She stared up at the sky and the clouds and then slowly closed her eyes, wincing through the pain. 

Somehow, this broken girl managed to smile, with cut and bruised lips and a bloody body dripping onto the asphalt.

She smiled because she would get to see him again.