Burning Star

That day was a mystery. That day was not planned. That day was all wrong.

“Today will be sunny with some showery spells.” Said the weatherman.

The weatherman was wrong. The clouds never stopped throwing the rain down with angry fists. It shook the windows of every home.

She was not supposed to be a mother. She was not put onto the earth to become a mother. Rape is never planned. Truth be told, neither is pregnancy. A child was born nine months later. Lindsey, a perfectly normal looking child, was not welcomed to the earth.

Lindsey was a mystery. Lindsey was not planned. Lindsey was all wrong.

It rained on her birthday for ten years until one year it began to hail. She never cut her hair after she turned six. Lindsey’s hair was jet black and it danced around her waist. There was nothing ugly about Lindsey. Big green eyes, like orbs, they could see through anyone, and on the 17th of July at 3.pm, seventeen years and three hundred days old, Lindsey saw the face of her father and knew that she did not belong anywhere.

Where was home?

Lindsey didn’t know her mother. Her mother couldn’t stand the look of her baby so gave her away, to a new home. She knew the world wasn’t made of dreams and wishes anymore. It was a polluted world painted over with sunny skies and glittering sea’s to make us think everything is all bright and beautiful. She knew her baby wasn’t meant to be hers, but she named her Lindsey after her first doll as a child and gave her away.

So, Lindsey was a child to an unknown woman and a face of a man. Lindsey had his hair and nose, her other features, she guessed, belonged to her mother. Lindsey had taped her father when he appeared on TV one morning when the news was on. He was jailed for raping ten women; one she guessed was her mother. She tried to feel sorry for her, but didn’t. She tried to feel something, but couldn’t. She just finally understood a small part of her life.

The smell of the summer confused Lindsey. The summer for Lindsey was a subtle mixture of pollen, freshly cut grass from the football fields, and the smallest hint of ice cream. The sun would follow her on her shoulders as she ventured outside. Lindsey was not a fan of the sun. The burning star in the sky did nothing for her, but she did like rainbows. Lindsey was never a massive fan of science, she was a desperate believer in dreams and wishes, and therefore didn’t want to know how rainbows happened, and why the hairs on your arms stood up when the wind wouldn’t blow and the way she felt when her eyes would land on some men.

Lindsey was desperate for something.

“He told Martin he likes you. Thinks you have a nice rack.”

“He said that?”

“Sure thing.”

Lindsey and her nice rack got married to Jeremy. There were no rainbows that day.

Whenever the sun would follow her on her shoulders, she would try and escape it. It felt too good and she needed that feeling to happen in her marriage. Lindsey, like I said before, was not ugly. Men were attracter to her high cheekbones, skinny physique and long legs. Nobody else could tell she didn’t belong anywhere but they didn’t care. Now she was married. The lovemaking was something better than the burning star, at first.

Slowly and before she knew it, she became a burning star.

Her skin would burn blue, green, purple and red. She became the colours of the rainbow, and for once she wished she didn’t flunk science.

For three whole years Lindsey didn’t speak a word. She didn’t scream when he’d abuse her, she wouldn’t speak a word to her old friends; she wouldn’t even talk in her sleep anymore when she finally got some. She was silent as the grave.

Until one day, when the weatherman said it would rain all day, the sun came out and it was the warmest day they had seen in five years.

Lindsey was a mystery and on that day she knew who she was.

“You beat me one more time, I’ll scream so loud the heaven’s will here me.”

He beat her until she became dust. Her name was whispered in the wind for a second and then it got sucked away by a breath of a newborn child. Lindsey did scream and heavens did hear. Her mother heard.

Jeremy felt proud but empty after that day. Something was missing. He was like an apple that had a chunk bitten out of it but then thrown to the side of the street. Someone took a part of him away and he couldn’t get it back (unless he was willing to fly to the burning star in the sky.) Ten years later he killed himself with a bullet. He saw a face of a girl that looked exactly like Lindsey. This little girl was meant to be on this earth. She was ten years old.

Lindsey’s home was never on the Earth. Her home didn’t contain our foundation of cement, bricks and love. She could have travelled all over but she would have never found a place where the sun would make her feel like everyone else, when the rain would make her want to dance in it and the falling leaves make her feel like a free woman.

No.

Her home welcomed her when she screamed the last breath out of her. And it suddenly became worth it. The days of confusion, the long summers of smells and the hard beatings she got. Lindsey finally belonged.

Lindsey didn’t know it back then, but she was desperate for death.

Death smiled at Lindsey and she smiled back, and they walked towards to the burning star on a rainbow with home on the other side. It smelt of pollen, freshly cut grass from the football fields, and the smallest hint of ice cream, and it smelt good.