It's too soon for me to tell you that you should have known better but here I am telling you that for all your pain and rage, you knew what you were getting into and have no one to blame but yourself.
But her eyes, you say.
Fuck her eyes, kid! Every woman has eyes.
But, you go on, the way she told stories, the way she took a suggestion and gave it arms and legs, gave it lungs, a soul, a mouth.
Okay, so not everyone can tell a tale, but would you rather a story or the truth?
But the way she forgave, the way she heard through all the hard, sharp words to discern the trembling source.
Yeah, but you couldn't forgive her.
I did! I did so many times!
Not this time. This time you drove out to the woods and waited for the sun to go down before you lit a match because it didn't feel right to burn your hope in a world filled with light.
The stars poked through the sky like splinters, and you felt them needling your heart. Isn't that right?
I held the rose I'd been holding onto for two years, the dried bloom I'd kept through all our separations, and I offered it to the cold sky and the owl screeching in the next campsite, and I took a match and pressed my thumb to it like lips to an ear and whispered, "Please, please let me be," and I struck it and watched the past writhe like a fly caught in a web and I shivered as the embers glowed red then orange then pink before fading to the grayish black that matched the space she left inside me when she broke my heart for the last time.
You are so young. How many times have you looked at the stars and wondered if you weren't one of them? Just another thimbleful of light tacked into the dark, a placeholder for future generations to ignore? You could be part of the constellation Repeating Heartache or Broken Record or Girl Forever Crying In the Night. You'd outshine the rest, your tears glinting in the light of your matches, all the fires you've burned, all the women you loved who failed you shimmering in the circle of your constellation, trapped.
I thought she'd trust me this time. I thought if I trusted her, she'd show me who she was, she'd let me slip inside, she'd let me see her, and we'd understand each other better than we understood anyone else, and we'd cast off fear forever. The dark would tremble around us, afraid of what we could reveal. But she lied to me. She was only honest when it was convenient, which is not like being honest at all.
Come on, Carol. You're not an amateur; what did you expect?
She said she'd tell me. She said she loved me. She said I was her best friend. She said she wanted to marry me. She said she said she said. She said, and I believed her.
You believed her, even though she'd lied before, even though she'd given you no reason to believe.
She said God was with her. She said she'd never go back, never turn to the darkness for solace again. She said it with those eyes, and I believed her because I wanted her to be my best friend, because I wanted to marry her, because I wanted to glow in the dark.
You're pathetic. As gullible as a kid watching a magician pull a rabbit from a hat. You can't chase away the dark with a few kisses and God's name. The dark is eternal, and necessary. Stop investing faith in flowers that die, in people who tremble beneath the stars and in the clear light of day. This woman you're looking for does not exist.
But I've seen her screaming at the sky. I've seen her rocking in the smoke of a thousand fires. She has eyes that glitter with the assurance of the stars, and when she makes a promise, she does it without words because she knows words are nothing but the ash of intention; only action can set a rose ablaze.
