they laid side by side with their fingers adjoined gently - the side of his pointer finger gently rubbing hers: his other arm resting upon her delicate ribcage, her ribcage like butterfly wings. they held one another tightly in attempts to ignore the draft sweeping in through the cracks of the ramshackle rafters - the red brick walls were stone cold to the touch. worn-down votives and candlesticks surrounded them, releasing and burning the tiny glows of warmth that remained. he wore a worn and faded burgandy, hunter green and black plaid tuxedo jacket with a black button-up shirt underneath - she wore her grandmother's antique vintage white wedding dress and veil - the veil still halfway covering her face. one leg and barefoot wrapped around his - the other stretched and hanging off the side of the mattress: one white broken highheel dangling off the end of her foot. light strands of cobwebs were tangled in her thick long black hair and eyelashes. he had saved her from that dreadful, doubted marriage at the altar once again as they had run through the graveyard together in frantic escape. two lovers, desperate and trying to stitch their blue hearts together into whatever satisfying mangled mess they could create and oddly call beautiful. anything that could remind them the ability to love has not been lost forever.
she screamed at the top of her lungs through the splits, waiting for an echo. any sound she could recognize. he had saved her, but she wasn't sure if she wanted to go home or not and she knew he still loved the girl from his past. the brittle bones of trapped birds' ribcages and skulls embedded in the insulation in the walls around them.
"we can do this forever, you know. we can die just like this." she told him as they laid hand in hand. they'd find their wedding-clothed skeletons and eventually their bones grinded into dust, implanted deep within the squeaking and griding floorboards below, right next to the rundown olive green chair and antique rocking horse. "we'll be the surface the next strangers come here to walk upon." but his fingers started to loosen their grasp as she spoke the words.
but did they really love each other, or were they just trying to keep warm until they had the breaking daylight's heat?
"you can let our bodies go, you know. i don't want to remember you like i remember her.
i wouldn't ever exchange your beautiful smile when we laugh together for this," his haunted memory replied. the sound of her platform boots stomping hard down the narrow staircase still the most noted memory he held of her. the contents of the anger she swallowed discharged forcefully and abundantly all over the steps behind her. she was once so beautiful to him, but now only a rotten corpse he slowly and painfully watched decay.
"i've needed you this entire time, and we were only a thousand lovers away from each other," he whispered in his slumber as she hesitantly shifted her contemplative eyes from him to the splintered ladder leading down to the exit. she felt so at peace where she was right now, but how would they feel tomorrow? was it all worth it? was he really looking at the ghost over her shoulder when he looked into her eyes? the ghost calling him home. she had to sacrifice a lot to be there with him every time: warmth, security, trust.
they had had their last dance that night. she tried to say goodbye but he raised his finger to her mouth to silence her and just continued to hold her on the floor, gently rocking and swaying side to side as the piano music measured time and the walls crumbled around them. they were the dancing dead, feasting on forbidden fruits on an elegant table decorated with antique victorian candlesticks and china. seeing ghosts had caused her to believe, to dwell in possible illusions of hope. their figures slowly vanishing as the dusty old grandfather clock ticked the night away. the ghost of her rotten corpse still calling him over every angle he looked as he shifted his eyes in different directions.
she bent down and whispered in his ear, "whenever you watch the starry summer skies, think of me and dream were shooting stars.", and tossed the dozen red roses he gave her out the broken building's window, the petals fluttering through the autumn chill in the wind as they fell. she abandoned him this time and walked home for the last time that morning - she'd never again allow herself to be seen under the 18 degrees below the horizon shade at astronomical dawn. there was something about that morning that was different from all the previous mornings after they departed. it was just something about the autumn sunlight as opposed to the summer's - just something about the shade that reflected differently off all the surrounding surfaces - something about the way it made her feel diffrecently. she surrendered and traded all those aged summer nights for a young start - the morning, a new beginning.
-shelly scene (reinecke)
No comments:
Post a Comment