Why Did You Stop

There was no obituary in the newspaper from my neighborhood, there was no black clad statues to attend the funeral of the boy, wait no, of the girl who was unjustly killed simply for being herself. Its hard to drift smoothly into death when your life is so violently snatched from you. I would know, because I am that girl.

The middle of winter is a time as good as any to commit a murder, the snow fuses with the scarlet blood and melts into the ground, leaving not a trace of the body to be found. I was walking down the path I am walking now, a homemade scarf tied tight around my neck to hide my accursed Adams Apple. I don't remember when I saw him, just that his beauty was far beyond my own. Black, sleek hair, safety-pin piercings, and a look of such disdain for the world it made any who get caught in his glance feel naked and exposed.

A week later, I sat down at the same bench I am sitting at now. He never really seemed to mind the company, as a matter of fact, he seemed rather lonely as the frost crept along the pathway, and retreated back down into the earth. "So, why did you stop?" I was struck dumb by the sound of his voice, like soft rain on the velvet petals of an orchid. "Stop what?" I asked, painfully aware of the sound of my own voice. masculine and femininely wrong to the world and yet, oh, so right to me. His next response was one word. One word I should have done the moment I saw his gorgeous visage, "Walking." He said "Why did you sit with me."

A month later, our apartment was filled with beautiful things, he was the dark to my light, the snuff to my candle. When the world seemed too chaotic to continue he would hold me in his arms and say, "You are mine, and I am yours, Death must wait patiently for our souls to be lain to rest." I am back in that apartment, but it lacks the beautiful things that kept me tethered here. Our polaroid photos are gone, the couch we slept on is no longer in the unit, the only thing left is a crack in the wall.

My head is splitting, I taste copper and my ears are ringing. I am on the floor and I cant see and there is a hand around my neck. Who was it that made that crack in the wall? Oh right...

It was his father.

"I wont have my son, my only son, sleeping with a devil worshipping tranny like you!" He inched his face closer to mine, and suddenly it all made sense, our love wasn't meant to be, people like us don't get our happy ending and white picket fence. I smiled sadly watching as the whole world exploded into a starburst of needlepoint colors, and my head was slammed into the wall.

A year later I was buried, And I am at the same place where I reside now. I watch each day from beside my headstone as a boy with jet black hair, piercings, and gorgeous, challenging eyes stares deeply into the rock. Every day, he says the same thing before me, not knowing I'm right there, universes apart, and yet so very close. "Why did you stop walking." he says.

Its so incredibly difficult to let go of those you love, so I give him a simple, albeit honest answer.

"Because I love you."

He walks home because he cant hear me, the dead cant speak after all. And I chase his car until my spectral feet become raw with sores, and I have to give in to exhaustion.

Park, Apartment, Grave, Highway.

There is always a pattern in how I float through my days, unbothered by any events that happen to take place at any given time. Besides one, I see him on that bench, and I see him laying with me on our couch, I see him whispering questions to my corpse, and crying pleas to god on the highway.

I hate that he still loves me, I hate that when he sleeps at night he feels the absence of my head in his lap. I hate that I still love him, I hate that my twisted desire of love and loss contorts to want to push him off a bridge, set his car on fire, drug him gently to sleep.

I want him with me. But he is so loving and so beautiful I could never harm him. I am so lonely without my heart, because I gave it to him and he held it while my brains were being bashed in. I want his, because although he gave it, I cant carry a living heart across the veil of the dead.

Romeo and Juliet were lucky, they died together. But now I wait patiently for my Romeo to breath his last, and hope to god that day is far from now, because I love him more than anything in either of our worlds.

I am sitting on the bench, two years later, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. I don't look at the person because I am scared of what could be, but what will never be. I feel a rough, calloused hand guide my chin from my chest to a face. His face. He can see me, He can touch me, he is dead. A tear finds its way down my face but freezes on the bench, I wont believe he is here, not after six-hundred and seventy days and five hours and one minute. But if he is here, if the phantom body matching his detail is him, then I'm no longer alone. "Why." I ask, my throat sounding like crushed icicles that hang above us like glittering knives. "Because I am yours, and you are mine." He lifts his hand to grasp my own, and I finish our mantra, that like our love, has outlasted death. "And death must wait patiently to take both of our souls." Suddenly I am flooded with feeling. We are back in the apartment his lips trace a line around my body as his hands grasp my hair and he leaves marks around my neck like a purple collar. I remember his body and his laugh, his eyes and his hugs. And suddenly, I come undone.

I wake up exposed on our couch, he is covered in a blanket that appears to have been stolen as sleep took from us our waking conscience. He wakes up, shares the blanket and we fall back into a quiet slumber that I have longed for six-hundred and seventy days, eleven hours and six minutes. And we don't wake up, we lay there peacefully, for the rest of all time.