Leave A Message

“Hey.”

The space heater buzzed in our room, the dim sound hanging in silence. I stared at the reflection of my face in the phone, warped by the screen protector. I heard the soft muffle of the bereaved outside. I should be there, but I couldn't bring myself to stand. I breathed in, and held it. Thoughts, places, things that I had tried to push down whirled around me. I breathed out, and felt the pressure release.

“You must’ve just missed me. I’m probably doing something more worth my time than responding to you -” Someone coughed pointedly in the background. The shadow on the other side of the phone laughed, a musical tone. He continued, a smile and laugh radiating from his voice. “-But don’t worry, I’ll get back to you soon. Salut!” I hung in the silence, suspended by ivory strands that spun from my head and pierced my heart.

Bee-.

Quickly, I hung up. I waited a beat, and called him again. His mom started to speak in the common room of the dorm we shared. I couldn't hear it through the oak door to my cage.

I lay next to my phone, repeating the message over and over again until my tears crusted on my pillow. Until everyone went home. Everyone but one person.

His sister knocked on the door to our... my room. She walked in, a pale woman dressed in such midnight-black that her neck and face seemed to float through the gloom - to cut through it.

"How are you... doing?" I stayed silent, staring up at a fixed point in the ceiling. She made her way over to me, a flush of her incense-themed perfume followed her in. She put her hand on my shoulder as I lay in my grief, and whispered to me. "It's not your fault." Her voice was raspy, as if she'd scream-cried an hour before she worked up the courage to see me. I kept quiet. We both knew whose fault it was. She squeezed my shoulder. “It’s not your fault.” She’s a terrible liar. She sighed. “Mom wanted me to give you the ashes. I don’t know why since she’s never liked you, but she gave them to you anyway. Personally, I think you deserve them. After everything you went through, it’s the least that we can do.

“It’s not your fault either.” My voice was quiet, but loud all the same. She sighed.

“I know.” She stood up and left to be with her wife of four years. The door swinging shut was a death knell that shivered throughout my body.

I sighed and let the message play one final time. His voice broke me one final time.

I closed my eyes as I let the “you-may-now-leave-a-message” tone pierce my tangle, and hesitantly, I began to speak.

“Hey.” It was more a question than a statement. My cheekbones hurt.

“It’s been… a while. I know that I’m the last person you want to hear from, and you don’t even have to respond. I don’t know if… if I want you to respond.” I paused for a moment, the words stuck behind the lump in my throat.

“I’ve been told that I should call you, to get some kind of closure. I’ve been scared, y’know?” My fist gripped a fistfull of my sheets. “It feels like getting closure would end us. Like it’s a sign to move on - and I don’t want to move on.

“So I’ve put it off. It’s been weeks since I was supposed to call. And it’s not just because I’m scared. This is just stupid. This whole thing is just-” I sighed into an empty room. “Stupid.

“But I’m doing it anyway. Because as much as I’m scared of what comes next, I can’t keep holding on to a past that can’t exist in the future. You’re, um. Let me put it this way.” I looked out my window, into the star-speckled-sky. “You were the brightest star in my sky. You were beautiful. You kept me warm when my heart tried to freeze, you guided me when I was lost.” I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes as I tried to keep myself from falling apart.

“But even the brightest stars fade. And when they do, the afterimage - the stain left in your vision - does nothing but block you from seeing what’s right in front of you until that too, fades. And then you’re left with the beauty of what had been. Then you’re left with the memories of your star, the memories of light - forever dimmed.

“But that’s not a bad thing. The light that I saw could have been from someone that had already died, and we both know that if you hadn’t stopped making your own light by the time that we had met, it was… gone soon after.” I put my hand on the cool glass and watched my breath cloud the window. I balled it up into a fist, and slammed it against the glass with a thunk. "If nothing else keeps me going, then that memory of light is enough. I need to stop letting a memory destroy my ability to make new ones. You wouldn't want that.

"Everyone's telling me it's not my fault. That I shouldn't hate myself for the way you left. But the signs were there, I.. I should've seen them. I should've grown up and stopped caring about other people more than you. I should've..." I made a noise that I can't describe as anything other than pure desperation and regret. I breathed in. I held it. I let it go.

I gathered myself.

"You saved me, yet I couldn't save you. But I promise you, I promise you, I won't take it for granted. I will persevere."

“And of course now I’m running out of things to say. After… all of that. I don’t really know how to end this. A-and maybe there isn't a way to end this. This wasn't supposed to end. But it did. Somehow, it did.”

“Goodbye.”