The Lopsided Swing

Life for me had ended here.

Between these two swings.

On a rainy night.

At dark.

Alone.

The moment I pulled the trigger, we both knew that I was gone for good that no amount of therapy could help suppress this memory. I still see Harrison sometimes, only those times when the dreams of you come back. When those vivid flashes of these woods come back, they come briefly but those that I see are lovely. Of how you danced amongst the trees and the bright red of your hair quickly turning dark as the drops fell, not only on your head but on the soft sand, on the greens of the trees and on these swings.

No one lived in close range to these swings, it would be a hike just to get till here, but here they were. Two worn out planks hanging in the middle of nowhere. I broke the one and you couldn’t stop laughing, later you pushed me on yours. You pushed me until you couldn’t anymore until I couldn’t anymore. We prolonged it for too long I’m glad we did and I am happy with the fact that you were happy before I ended that. Before I ended the dancing and swinging.

I did not tell Harrison everything only the good memories of us. The bad ones they come with such intensity that I can not stand to tell him; I try though but then I realized that if I only speak of the good maybe I will get better. I haven’t, that’s why I am here back where we both had given up. It hurts just thinking about it. How the very place where we first kissed was the very place I first drew a gun. The first time I took a life. Took your life.

The forest was so loud and dark I thought I would pull the trigger on myself. I thought I would get so scared that I would faint and wake up with you gone nowhere in sight, just gone. I am not sorry though, your smile was more radiant than ever at that moment just before you fell to the ground. We stood right here between the lopsided swing and yours, it felt like we were sinking that maybe a whole was forming underneath us and that we were slowly falling into darkness. Maybe I should’ve held unto you a little longer but I had to run. No matter how loud the rain was pouring or how far away from town we were I had to go. You wanted me to go.

Everyday I imagine you here all alone arms stretched out the way I left you. You wore that blue and green summer dress that Ronny bought you, I hated how much you loved it. Thought it wasn’t the dress you loved it was the person who gave it to you. He cared for you back but you did not want to lose him, so you broke his heart. You didn’t want it to be him who pulled the trigger, you would never ask someone you loved to do it. You wanted it to be someone you could look in the eye and be okay with losing them.

That’s what hurts the most that you were fine with losing me, with leaving me with the guilt, the, hurt, the blood. How could you have asked something like that of me? The day you asked I realized you didn’t love me back, that you were using me since the day you left him. It was alright though, just to have spent time with you before you were gone for good, was more than enough for me. Sometimes I wonder if you pictured Ronny here that night in the woods with you, instead of me or if he was the one that showed you the swings. If this was one of your special places with him, if it symbolized something for him and not you.

Your parents came straight to my house when they received your letter on the wardrobe. Luckily, I had changed into dry clothes and immediately cleaned the mud of the floors then left my boots in the bathtub. They questioned why my eyes were red and my uncle covered for me, as if he knew I was guilty of something, saying I was high. He still looks at me as if he knows I was there that night, that I was the one who pulled the trigger. You used to make him laugh, you were the only one that could make him smile and not only is his smile gone now but mine too.

I should have come up here earlier, but my conscience wasn’t deteriorating as much as it is now. I keep telling myself that you wanted it, that you asked me to do it but we both know that I wasn’t supposed to be the one to take your life, no one was. You had no right to ask that of anyone and you had no right to leave behind a trail of hurt. Your mother hasn’t gone to work for a month she comes up here often, maybe she feels like she can connect with you more here or find answers to the many questions you left behind. Your father comes home late at night, some nights he can barely walk to the door. He used to call me to take him home from the bar but now he just wanders around finding his own way home.

You killed me as well that night, broke me beyond repair and left me to carry the pieces on my own. I hope you can hear me, I hope you come back to this swing and I hope that you are no longer in pain. Even though you left me in fragments, I want to go back to before you enveloped my hand and placed the pistol to your head, to when we were between these two swings on a rainy night at dark, together.