Unanswered questions

Submitted into Contest #53 in response to: Write a story that begins with someone's popsicle melting.... view prompt

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Not sure if this qualifies as a story but it's what I came up with!

can't believe u really did it. parents think it was an accident. we know it wasnt. xx

We found the popsicle near the train tracks, almost melted. It was a fine treat for the ants nearby who had taken the job of not wasting a sickly-sweet drop. For us it meant the end of the world. It meant you were gone.

Gone is not the same as lost. If we lose our way, it is possible for us to find a home once more - when we are gone, there is no home for us anymore. Point blank. Illuminated by the light at the end of the tunnel, covered by the dirt our loved ones bury us in, we become carcasses for whatever lives six feet under to feast upon. We no longer bleed out of our cold flesh, the world becomes just a little bit too empty for someone to comfortably roam around. Some unnamable part is always missing from the connected body of mankind. Crimson coloured glasses on my eyes - everything is too sharp and cuts me at every chance. Hands too strong press desolate worlds upon my skin, I never knew being born anew would be this painful. 

went to the funeral today. brought u ur fave flowers. xx

     I’m bleeding rose petals from my heart but I never want it to stop because it’s better to feel this than to let the empty void inside of me overtake and never stop never stop never stop - my brain is foggy and the petals keep falling and falling, crashing fumes spreading through my bones and taking control and please stop please stop please stop, I never wanted to hurt but it did anyway. The hurt never stops. I numb it the best I can, alcohol and cigarettes controlling my body instead of me - I’m just the mere shell of a human, going about my daily life but never understanding a thing that’s going on. Again and again I drown. It doesn’t even matter anymore if it’s in my tears or the body-numbing water of the stormy sea - everything is grey and paining anyways and strong waves rock my body further and further from the sandy shore and it doesn’t even matter anymore if I get back because he is gone. Gone. It is a four-letter word but I didn’t understand its meaning until it rocked my body like the tremors of an earthquake only I am a lowly girl that can only take so much pain, rocking back and forth on the ground of my almost-home, pressing unto the nearest human body I can find, just to understand they are looking at me with pity in their eyes - God, I can’t stand this look in their eyes - just to lock myself in solitude and howl at the sky, a lonely wolf in need of a pack but the nearest forest is miles away.

miss u. xx

He will never come back. I stare into the swirls of my morning coffee, imagining the swirls in his head as he jumped on the train tracks. He will never come back. I feel the sweet taste of strawberry jam on my tongue, almost feeling his lips press onto mine as they once did - sweet and numb, devoid of all feeling, only a hint of passion and desire as his shirt tumbled messingly over his head. He will never come back. I walk outside and feel the warm sun shine light on my toes, almost as warm as his laugh on a summer evening, over a stupid joke none of us would find funny anymore - the memory is untainted and tainted at the same time by the tragedy that took us by surprise and turned our lives upside down. He will never come back. 

saw a guy who looked exactly like u today. xx

 The first few days are the hardest. After a while one gets used to the emptiness where a piece of one’s soul once was - at first you feel it missing, as if someone reached with a fist inside your ribcage and pulled something out of you with force. The seven stages of grief are a joke. They are a fake representation of the emotions you feel as you lose a loved one - no sadness, only grief, no anger, only rage, no guilt, only shame. Or so I once thought. Shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, depression and reflection, loneliness, the upward turn, reconstruction and working through, acceptance and hope. They were lies someone had set up in the hopes of any of us feeling okay ever again. Would we ever? A friend has been lost. Ripped from our lives at the age that’s supposed to be our best years. I yearn to feel his presence on last time but that time was a warm breeze on a cloudy summer day and the present is a hurricane, all jagged and rock-hard and painful and I miss him I miss him I miss him and please rip me inside of you and spit me out a new woman.

took xanax for the first time in years. kinda starting to see the appeal. xx

I’m not a damsel in distress. I’m a damsel looking for a peace of mind, a damsel looking for the calm after the storm, a damsel looking to calm her beating heart after nights of wandering around looking for salvation. A damsel going through the seven stages on her own, hoping to find acceptance but finding only a silver lining on skies filled with thundering clouds. Nobody said it would be this exhausting. A year has passed. Sleepless nights and dried tears on the back of a friend’s hand mark my coming of age story. A year has passed and somehow solemnly we have grown to fill the empty hole where he once was. 

Had a dream u were alive. Today was hard. xx

The nights got heavier and heavier. Weighing on me, they made every mundane, daily thing disappear. The human body will never support wings but I have to hope for him for him for hi - Where is he? I’m in a forest, not understanding my snowy surroundings, I only know that I have one important task to fulfil. Finding him. I don’t even know where to start. He has to be here somewhere. A sinking feeling fills my stomach, as I understand - I will not find him. He will not find me either. Mike is here no more. I wake up, drenched in sweat, tears flowing down my cheeks. Loneliness filled me up and spilled out of me in the form of irritation and anger. The fury boiling inside of me took over and became destructive as I watched helplessly on my body that didn’t feel as if it was mine anymore. A rage so passionate it could break glass just by sheer force of will. Bargaining my life for his, I spent my slumber under star-less skies, praying for a response from God. He never listened. 

cant believe u did something like that to us. xx

I ache for something a little more than life as I remember all of our missed moments. Words that flow out of his mouth as graceful as the flow of waves in a turning tide and we are celebrating his birthday I marked in my calendar so long ago, he is the calm after the storm, he takes the crashing waves inside of me and folds them into weight-less birds, they take off to the same direction as my dreams and I have come to known every crevice of his most feared nightmares. Instead they were pulled into the grey, godless sea and left fighting with the laws of nature for themselves. 

you lie in a really beautiful place. xx

The day they decide to leave us, to soar into the unknown abyss of death - please let us someday meet again, paradise or hell, as long as I can see him one last time - a knowing smirk marks their face and they can’t feel the constant tug towards the earth for the first time in ages. Or so I had read. I have lived every possibility of what-if's and what-not’s, if only I had noticed sooner, maybe maybe maybe I would’ve changed something, maybe, just maybe, his bare feet would caress the deep green soil of the forest once more as he inhaled deeply the sweet smell of summer and unbothered adolescence. The word ,,maybe’' is a bittersweet lie we tell ourselves. It twists and turns our reality until the lines between the real and imaginary are blurred and we pass our days blinded by the hope that one day we will wake up and ,,maybe’' he will be with us once more.

were you happy in your last moments?

We can’t play make believe in this game of life forever. There comes a day when, against your will, laughter spills out of you like a river overflowing its’ shores. He will always be with us. Hiding in our ribcages, playing hide and seek where we always lose, Mike stays with us on days when sun bounces off our golden strands of hair, he stays with us on the days when rain is a gloomy curtain that distorts our view. When we sleep, we sleep in the flutter of his eyelids and we dream in sync with his heartbeats. He is with us. Always and forever.

happy birthday - just bought ur fave popsicle xx

got the job - hope my coworkers wont hate me xx

going off to college! xx

i cant do this anymore. love you. hope ur happy up there. xx

August 02, 2020 15:45

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1 comment

Jane Andrews
12:19 Aug 13, 2020

I'm so glad I was asked to read this, Helena. I thought it was beautifully written - "I’m bleeding rose petals from my heart", "that time was a warm breeze on a cloudy summer day and the present is a hurricane, all jagged and rock-hard and painful" and "he takes the crashing waves inside me and folds them into weightless birds" are three of my favourite metaphors. However, it's not just about the lyrical writing: it's about the raw grief that comes through in the totally believable portrait of a woman who's lost her lover. You express very ...

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