December

TW: suicide

June

I hate the person in the mirror. I think I must love hating the person in the mirror though. Why else would I have so many mirrors? The only wall without a mirror is the one my bed is against. It has a window instead, but the window is just as dangerous. The world outside it moves. The reminder that the world will keep spinning is the worst part. I don’t want it to keep spinning and I can't even comprehend why it didn’t stop. I’ve spent a week staring at her. I don’t know who she is, but she looks rough. Brunette locks tangled and fallen around her face carelessly. Bright blue eyes are in a daze. Her nose is red from the tissues wadded up, surrounding her, on the ground. She’s slumped on the floor, knees bent, against her dresser just staring. They say to turn the page so I do, but with a hurt like this, you might as well burn the whole damn book. 

I don’t think it’s high enough, but I’ve looked out that second-story window more than I should. So I force myself out of the position I’d been in for who knows how long and walk to the bathroom. Another mirror but it doesn’t matter. I still see the same girl I don’t know. I delicately unzip my jacket and remove it. It still has the hospital sticker on it that says June. I fold it up neatly and lay it on the counter. Then I strip the rest of my clothes off and just let them form a pile on the floor. I turn on the water and that’s really the best I can do for now. I just stand there and let the warm water soak me. Standing still created random patches of dryness in my hair. I watch the droplets race down the wall because my mind is analyzing every little thing it can, trying to avoid the blocked-out thoughts. The ones that hurt so much I’m numb to. 

My best still isn’t enough, so it seeps through. The image of her lying in the hospital bed burns my mind. I think it is forever engraved there. My legs give out and I fall to the shower floor. The pent-up pain releases and the page flips itself back over. First I do something that I think looks like I’m screaming, but emits no sound. Then I start to shake and my sight blurs. I sob quietly so that, although no one is listening, no one can hear me. My body continues this ignoring what I say because no matter how hard it tries right now it can’t stand. Instead, I doubled over while my mind screamed all my faults and all its hate at me. I just gasped for breath once I couldn’t breathe anymore. Each time I tried to stop squeaky whimpers came out and I’d start again. All this pain with nowhere to go. I knew I should’ve burned the book.

A muffled, “June, hello?” makes me slap my hand over my mouth and begin the squeaky sequence as I try to stop. 

The muffled voice continues, “It’s August..” 

Oh August, my neighbor. His bathroom is on the other side of my bathroom wall, the same thing for our bedrooms. I turn the shower water off so I can hear him better, but I’m sure he’s just asking me to be quiet.

“I’m sorry to invade your privacy like this, but um... Well, no one deserves to be alone so... I have fluffy blankets and lots of pillows, and I kind of know all of your favorite movies because I can always hear them. Ah, sorry that sounded creepy. Look I’ve got some good snacks and if you don’t like them I can grab some different ones so um... Wanna come over?” 

I wasn’t expecting that, but he’s wrong some people do deserve it. “You don’t have to take pity on me, I'm sorry for being so loud. I’ll be quiet I promise.” 

“June stop being so independent and just come over.”

I don’t see the problem with being independent, it has always caused me less pain than dependency. Despite all of my views and all I’m feeling right now, company might be the safer choice. "Alright, what do I wear?” Anything you want I’ll meet you outside your door.

The night air is as cold as you’d think it’d be considering there’s frost blanketing the ground. We go into his apartment which's well kept, but it isn’t that surprising. He strikes me as a type-A person. His bed is of course made, but less practical than I expected. It has three different throw blankets, not including his duvet. There’s probably 2 feet of the bed length lost by all of his pillows. While I didn’t expect this out of him it’s perfect for me. We climb into bed together as if we’ve done it our whole life. 

“Do you want to talk?” he asks. 

We just stay curled up in that silence because when I try to answer nothing comes out. I don’t know what I want when it comes to anything. I can’t think when I barely know who I am. I don’t think I could even find the words to say if we talked. So I say, “I just want to run away.”

All he says is, “Oh.” As he takes this in for a minute.

“Well, if you ever run away, let it be with me.” 

So I do. I run away with him every day after that, to happier places. I live my life like nothing happened because nothing did. That book is gone, I burned it. 

August

Sometimes I wish I could read her mind so I knew how she felt about me. We spent the rest of that winter together laying in the snow, then we sunbathed in flower fields, after that we watched the fireworks together, suddenly the leaves fell, and we were laying in the snow again. On some days I felt like we were just friends. Other days I felt like we were so much more, but sometimes she’d make me think we were strangers. She pushed me away and pulled me in like ocean waves. Never letting me too close and if she did she pushed me right back. I don’t think she’s ever really here enough to love me, she’s always somewhere else lost in her mind.

I’m walking home from work on my usual path and of course pass one of the houses I do every day. This house is different though. A little old woman with a vibrant garden lives here. I’ve known her since I was little because she used to be a friend of my mother's. Each day she lets me take a Forget-Me-Not because they’re June’s favorite. I smile at her as I walk up to the gate to get one, but she stops me this time.

“August. I want you to stop borrowing flowers from me for a girl who doesn’t even see you. Her eyes are closed and she’s kept them shut for a while now. You can’t open them if she doesn’t want them opened. I just don’t want you getting hurt by her Auggie.” 

“Alright Mrs.April. I won’t borrow your flowers anymore.” That’s all I tell her because I won’t leave June. Even if I wanted to, I could never do that to her the same as she couldn’t do it to me. I know where June and I are at right now isn’t great, but June has to be okay first. Her life is a numb daze, she isn’t really living. I’ll never give up on her though because without her in my life I wouldn’t really be living.

I walk up the steps to our apartment complex the same as I’ve done every day and the same as I’ll always do. We live together now. She’ll be home by now too and I can’t wait to see her. I only hope that today is a good day. The kind where we are together and she’s okay, even if she isn’t all there. I hate the days that her heart is shattered and I hold her while she cries. On those days my heart is shattered too. 

Today is neither of those days, but my heart is still shattered. When I get to our door it’s open. On it is a note that reads, “Dear Aug, I’m sorry. There is no right way to say this, but thank you. Thank you for holding me when I didn’t deserve it. I never meant to drag you down with me, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t stand up. Every day I fought so hard to stay and only because of you. You saved me, Aug. I would never have made it this long without you, but this is the part where you keep going without me. I burned the book, but the thing is it burned me with it. I can’t do it anymore. Wherever I go after this I hope you find me someday. Maybe we’ll be together again. I loved the way your soft smile fit your dark features so perfectly. I always wonder what you think when our eyes meet. For me, it’s how happy I am that I have you. I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t die each day for you anymore. I called someone to come take care of it so please don’t go in. Please don’t go inside Aug. Forever yours, June.” 

The paper has spots that are blurry all over. She must have been crying when she wrote this. The world around me blurs too and I don’t get it until I see them dropping off the tip of my nose. I push the door open and walk-in. In the living room, I see moving boxes stacked around. When I step closer I see all of her belongings put away neatly inside them. I just keep walking because if I stop now I won’t make it. The counters are all decorated with empty bottles and full ashtrays. The tape, paper, and pen she used for her note are laying on the kitchen table. I stumble down the hallway to our bedroom and first I see the gun, beside it is her hand. My eyes follow her arm to her shoulder, then to her head faced down on the ground. Her beautiful brown hair is red now. Her precious pale skin is red. The floor around her is red. It’s all red. Stuck to her face from dried tears is a picture. The picture is of her and her grandmother. Her grandmother raised her because her mom wasn’t a part of her life. When she died about a year ago they weren’t talking because of a fight. She always blamed herself. 

“I always told her she could, but I knew she’d never be over you May.”

I lay on the ground next to her and take her hand in mine. I think I had hoped there would still be warmth in it, but the only thing that's warm is the blood. On her hand is a ring that wasn’t there before. The ring I was going to give her tonight. My body begins to shake, but not with sobs. Laughter bursts out of me and I laugh endlessly like a maniac. 

“Isn’t that Ironic. It’s so awful it’s perfect.” Is what slips from my mouth between outbursts. 

On the floor next to us is the box the ring had been in. It isn’t empty though. Her ring has been replaced with one for me. On the carpet next to it she spelled out in red, “I never told you, but I fell in love too. I love you, Aug.” I take my free hand and slip the ring on my finger. I lay back down next to her and hold her other hand. 

I whisper to her, “I, August Solace, take you, June Brennan, to be my wife, to have and behold from this day on, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; even in death we won’t part.” 

I think my ears must be ringing until I see the red and blue lights flash in the doorway. The police come in to see us entwined on the ground and say words that all sound muffled to me. They try to pull me off of her, but I cling to her like it’s life or death because it is. So many hands grab me and try to pull us apart, but I refuse and use the only fight left in my body. Then a needle pokes my arm and nothings red anymore, it’s black. 

When my eyes open it’s all white. A nurse sees my eyes open and rushes out of the room. I just lay there lifeless. She comes back in with an officer. A friend of my dad, of course, small towns are like that I guess. He looks at me and his mouth moves, but I hear nothing.

His voice finally gets through, “Hello? Mr.Solace? Please listen, I just need to tell you a few things.” 

  His eyes are heavy with pity and sorrow. I don’t like either of those on him. I don’t want his pity and he doesn’t get to feel this pain, it’s all mine. 

Once he sees he’s got my attention he says, “Mr.Solace, I’m sorry to tell you Miss June Brennan is dead. We did the best we could, but we couldn’t save her.” 

So I say, “Hmm, That’s funny, that sounds familiar.”

The look in his eyes deepens, “Auggie, I’m truly sorry. I know how much you loved that girl. Look, we took care of everything for now, go get some rest and take some time to yourself. We can work out the details for the funeral when you’re ready, so for now you can go back home now.”

But he’s wrong. I can never go home.