The Color of Mud

I remember what I felt. What I felt when she looked at me. She was beautiful, no doubt. Her eyes, they were brown, and I remember because I always thought a girl that beautiful would have eyes the color of the sea, just like all the clichés. Eyes the shade of sapphire skies tinged with gleaming sunsets. 

But hers, they were brown. 

Not just any brown though. They were the color of brown that holds no sense of poetic being. They were the color of mud. And as I stared into those muddy eyes, I couldn’t help but think of that old saying, “there is beauty in simplicity”.  

There was simple beauty to a simple girl with simply muddy eyes. 

I can remember that it was snowing. It was snowing when we met. The café was crowded, and it seemed all inhabitants of the big city were gathered there. An aroma of caffeine and hushed whispers filled the void of the dreary atmosphere. Her hair was damp, and a limp dog-eared novel lay before me, but I had not bothered to turn a page since she had sat down beside me. 

“Leaves of Grass,” she had stated while nodding at the book on the counter before me, “Quite the clever choice.” She ordered her coffee black, laughed when I grimaced, and smirked before saying, “Bitter coffee for a bitter person in this terribly bitter world.”

I can remember that it was a Wednesday. It was Wednesday when I swallowed my pride and called her. I was nervous with anticipation, and cleared my throat three times before speaking. Her voice was steady, more relaxed when it came through the speaker. But it was still pleasurably alluring, and sounded the same the following night at dinner. My hands were shaking foolishly underneath the white-cloth table, so badly that I could barely hold my fork without it crashing to my plate. But that voice of hers, so incredibly pure and alluring, kept my silverware from tumbling. 

The cab she took back across the city was yellow, and when I paid her fare she kissed me. A life changing kiss from a life changing girl on a life changing date. She kissed me and all I could see was the color brown. 

I can remember that there were stars. There was a blanket of stars the night I fell in love. She was staring at the sky, gaping at the vast expanse of night. She was looking for the Big Dipper, while I was only looking at her. 

She sat up abruptly and spoke, “It’s captivating, wouldn’t you say? Stars, and how they’re so infinitely numbered; and how as humans, we are too.” All I could do was nod. 

“We create our own little infinities, burning gold inside us. And we tell ourselves that there is another one out there, another little infinity that is compatible with ours. I’m not saying that we’re incandescent bodies of light compacted by gravity and radiation– No, just that we are all our own, operating machines of flesh and bones mixed with emotions and thoughts of fire.” She smiled to herself a little before continuing, 

“I guess what I’m saying is, we don’t infinitely burn, but we infinitely love.” 

I remember that I was speaking. I was uttering the words before my brain could tell my heart not to fall down to my sleeve. 

“Then if on this day my infinity begins, it would be all for you, and you all your own.” She blushed and I grinned. “I am hopelessly in love with every constellation of your infinite soul.” 

It was risky, and so unbelievably stupid. A deafening silence trailed my words, until she kissed my lips and quietly replied, “I love you.” 

Three simple words to a fairly simple boy from a not so simple girl, and the electricity coursing between us was more complex than the universe we had begun to analyze. 

I remember how she beamed. The way her dimple showed when she revealed her collection to me. It was an orange shoebox labeled “memories” hidden underneath her mattress. 

A photograph, a painted lighter, and a small blade of grass lay inside. Hundreds of crinkled notebook pages of lines stained with ink. Compilations of poetry so consuming that my breath faltered at the catharsis. She was silent as I read, her lips pressed hard in a flat line. But the words, they were not as quiet. 

“Synesthesia”, one was titled.

 “I see in shades of grey,

but learn to love in beautiful hues.

You are an aura of synesthesia,

Fore my heart now bleeds in blue.” 

They were poetic words from a poetic girl with undeniably poetically muddy eyes.

I remember that it hurt me. It physically hurt to see her like she was. Tear stained pages were scattered across the floor and canvases were torn from the walls. There were words. So many words on Post-It notes around the room filling the spaces where collected artwork once hung. 

She was trembling, like an earthquake in my arms. She turned to me, “I am a hurricane.” she said, “They’re named after people and this is why. I am the biggest storm in my world and I couldn’t live with myself if even a drizzle forms in yours.”

 I kissed the black tears spilling down her cheeks and curled her thin fingers around my own. “You call yourself destruction, but rather you’re art. You’re a masterpiece of perfection and I will not cease trying to convince you.” She smiled for a bit, but it faltered at her next words. 

“You cannot save a person already drowning in their own blood.” 

She kissed my lips, I kissed her scars, and we fell asleep to the lull of each other's’ broken heartbeats. 

I remember that it was raining. It was raining the day I got the call. She was frantic, irrational. The calm voice I had heard on that first phone call was gone, replaced by strained statements with shaky syllables. There was a hollowness in her tone, a distance from reality I couldn’t bring her back to. 

I remember that I ran, feet flying and fear encompassing every thought that I could process. I remember that it was cold, so very cold. My jeans were baggy and my shoes were soggy. I couldn’t feel my fingers but I couldn’t find it within my cluttered brain to care. Something was wrong, something was very, very wrong. 

I remember that there was mud. There was mud next to her body and I laughed bitterly at the irony of the situation. How I had come to find brown to be such an aesthetically muddy color but standing there, watching it swirl with the bleeding red in the rain, it didn’t seem as appealing as I had thought. 

I remember that I cursed the rain because I knew every cheesy romantic movie had rain falling on the worst scenes but God did none of those moments compare to the reality that I was standing there forcing myself to look at and wondering, “Why?” 

I loved a broken girl with a fractured soul but I had sworn that I could mend her, I could make her wounds my own. What a foolish thought from a foolish boy who foolishly believed that mud could be so simple. 

I do not remember much more from that night. Whether it’s because of natural reactions to trauma, or because I can’t even begin to fathom that she might really be gone. I don’t remember how many stories up she was when she jumped. I don’t even remember what color she was wearing or how long it took the paramedics to arrive. 

I do not know the names of any of the officers who took my statement, but I do remember their pity and the pain that was penetrating my chest. I cannot recall any faces that I saw when scanning the crowd that had formed, the people who were watching as I lived my worst nightmare. A terrible dream about a terrible jump that ended a terribly broken girl’s life. 

There are many things I remember, and a few that I never will. But worse than these things are the ones I don’t know, and that I can’t seem to figure out. I don’t know what words she last uttered or what thoughts ran ablaze as she did it. 

You see, I don’t know why I got the opportunity to fall in love with such an eloquently damaged girl. I don’t even know how I got so lucky as to even meet her. Perhaps it was serendipity, or a flaw in fate’s design. Maybe even Leaves of Grass, or the suggestive idea that life has a reason. I guess it could be whatever you feel compelled to consider truthful. But me? I believe that maybe, just maybe, it was mud.