I was on my usual way home when I saw you, a young woman on the ledge of the familiar bridge, staring down the vast seas beneath. No one seemed to notice you or your sadness that I had been drawn to. People around me lost themselves to black mirrors, oblivious to the imminent tragedy that they would soon enough pretend to be a part of.
“I saw her drown.”
“She seemed so young, I just cannot believe it.”
“If only I had been closer when it happened.”
The could’ve’s and would’ve’s that never were, would rise to the surface, as though the world had always been full of saviours. Had they seen you at all, would they have been yours? Would it be easier for them to look past your grief, if only to forget their own? I never claimed to be different. Yet I, less than what you deserved, was what you got.
I walked over to the bridge that I knew well, my footsteps light. You heard, or saw me coming anyway. You did not look up, though you shuddered and moved away with precarious fear. I understood that fear in an instant. Your fear of my getting closer to you. To your secrets.
“That’s as far as you go,” Your voice was younger than you looked.
All I could muster in reply was weak, “You and I both.”
“So, stop me.”
I looked at you, staring daggers into space. You could not have been older than twenty five. The ring on your finger seemed too loose. Your wavy hair swayed in the light breeze, revealing a deep cut on your cheek. A purple bruise glowed on your neck. I swung my leg over the railing and joined you on the ledge.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Defiance lurked in your angry eyes, mad at not just me but the world. Yet your glare left soon as you saw my face. You gasped, trying not to let your shock show. I saw it anyway. I had seen that look enough to know it from a glimpse. Such familiar alarm, with its tinge of pity, almost made me laugh. If only that part of me was still in me.
“What happened to you?” you said, almost in a whisper.
It was a difficult question, and perhaps the most important.
Once, I never would have thought about doing what I did, only to become like this. But it all went wrong from the start, perhaps as it did for you. No one had hurt me, not like he did to you. But a death in the family had wounded me deep enough, as though it had been corporeal. A dream I had held onto for so long, dissipated like smoke in the wind.
What happened next was what you had almost screamed at. The bruised face of hitting the ocean at the speed of a highway car. A neck twisted at an excruciating angle. My ribs still pounded where you could not see or even begin to fathom. This was what had happened to me – a lifetime of grief after a moment of pain.
I looked at you, crying now as though you knew exactly the pain I was, and am, going through. What happened to you? All I could gather was a warning in answer to your question, “Something you never want to feel, no matter how much you believe you want it.”
I showed you the pain you would save, if you would just walk away.
You stayed silent. I was afraid that you would not heed. But you were only thinking, hard, and you finally did.
When you looked back from afar, I was gone. You never saw me again, for I was still drowning in the seas as I had that day, over and over again since, beckoning those like you to look somewhere else for freedom.
No Way Back © Brimstone Tales. All rights reserved.
Brimstone Tales 