Stars

I killed the man who loved me. He found me when I was hope and ash, and with careful fingers he scooped me up and took me home. Day by day he pushed me back together, forcing each splintering piece of dust into the mould I am today with the heat of his palms until I glistened. A diamond. He bought me one when I was twenty-four, young enough to sparkle and old enough to be cut just right. Fine lines and edges that catch the sunlight. White teeth shine just as tears do, smiles and sadness shimmering under the stars night after night, year after year, side by side.

I killed the man who loved me, and it was only a few hours ago. Blood seeped into the soil, glimmering like rubies revealing from the earth around him. He knew no pain in his end, only the reality of regret that he’d ever begun. The trees watched him as he passed, the wind swooping down and collecting his last breath. I let the moon take him in, turning his skin white and shiny. I couldn’t bring myself to dig, though I thought I must. He didn’t like dirt under his fingernails. I left him there for a while, alone in the darkness.

I killed the man who loved me, and now I’ll hide his existence. I’m stepping over his body, heavy and broken. His shovel cuts well into the forest floor, clean and precise triangles of mud and the insects that’ll eat him for the seasons to come. He liked flowers. His favourites were roses, because of their elegance in art and how raindrops sat in perfect bubbles on the crimson petals in the spring. They sparkle, he’d tell me, nothing’s perfect without a little decoration. I’m smiling now, because I think he’d understand this. He’s the root that grew me. He covered me in shining raindrops, but as all gardeners do from time to time he pricked himself. The thorns he’d ignored for so long as he marvelled at the surface of perfect folds that could carry the weight of jewels, of tears.

I killed the man who loved me, and now I’m in the middle. This isn’t my beginning or end. Rebirth is too whimsical for this life, time scars the mind. He’s a part of me and he’s gone. So I roll him into his grave and let him sink as I stand between the earth and the sky. I lay the rock that burst through his skull on his chest and bend down to gently wrap each arm around it before I make him disappear. One day someone will find the bones that remain, and the smeared piece of stone that ended his living here. I hope they pity him. I hope the story they give his life is kinder than the truth, as no matter the legacy of his assailant I’ll have gone on to more, to live. Maybe I’ll go change into something red now before I leave him forever. It seems only fair to bring a little bit of him with me.

I had loved the man who killed me from the inside out. He’d taken me to the theatre and danced with me around the kitchen island. He told me I’d saved his life, just as he had mine. My death was crueller than his, longer and duller. I lived as a corpse, something he’ll never know now I walk away from his grave. He’ll never know how confusing it can be, losing a piece of yourself day after day. He’ll never know what it does to a soul to stand in front of a mirror and wonder where you went, when you went, how you came to be here in clothes that you didn’t pick in a house that’s not yours in a place so far away from where you began. He was my whole world, everything that made me so small, so easy to keep in reflections, in picture frames. It’s safe to be small when you have a large hand pressing into your lower-back, leading you through doorways and reminding you there isn’t a chance of falling without being caught. I only realised he had to go when I no longer could see where my limbs ended and his began, when I couldn’t move alone without a pull or a tug. The night I decided how I would do it he told me I was getting ugly, that my age was starting to show. He’d looked at me for a long time before saying it, warning me that I was becoming more repulsive, more replaceable. He locked me in the spare room for the rest of the night just to remind me what it was to be alone in this world. My teenage diary placed neatly on the desk with his shouts vibrating through the oak for me to remember where I'd come from, where he’d found me.

Stars hanging on strings from my bedroom ceiling, cut out from a cardboard box. I look up and wonder when I’ll find my life. When I’ll be away from here and someone will love me. When the stars floating above my head will twinkle like a sprinkle of glitter, a spray of diamonds. The door is locked despite no one trying to get in, just to pretend it’s my choice to be alone. Alone in a flat at fourteen, watching spiders dance to eat and listening to the girl who drank too much crying on the phone outside my window. Watching the clock, waiting to age. Counting down the years for him to find me and knock on that door. Take my hand softly stranger, and guide me out, walk me down the street and tell me not to look back at the front garden of dying weeds sinking back through the cement. Have me and make me all I can be and in return I’ll love you like a child, incalculably, incessantly. I’ll look for you in the cardboard until we can watch the stars.