Suburbia

My breaths are ragged and trail behind me in the wind, I hear them smatter down onto the pavement behind me and I leave them there, uncertain if I’ll need them in the future. My eyes stream and the tiny drops they create pitter patter off my face and fall down and are crushed underneath my feet which continue to come down again and again and again, even though I left the rest of me scattered on the road behind me.

I can’t do this anymore.

All this hurt that has built inside me, that crashes over me wave after wave, has finally pulled me out to sea and the salt water burns my throat and clogs my lungs and I don’t understand what’s so wrong with closing my eyes and welcoming what is inevitable.

I suddenly recognise the burning ache in my legs and I sink to my knees, my final reserves of energy floating away with one final sigh. I lie in the mossy clearing I find myself in and stare up at the small patch of sky above me that isn’t obscured by trees.

Would it be so bad for me just to lie here forever? Surely it would be simpler, better for everyone in the long run? The grass is damp enough to cool the jumping fever that hops between my temples and the wind is calm enough to only rustle my hair and wash away my thoughts.

I lie in a form of stupor, an almost catatonic trance as I feel the world enter my chest and exit with each of my breaths. I can see the universe behind my eyes and I am both horrified and entranced. A great lethargy creeps over my body and soul as I look into the eye of my existence and realise that all
I live for has already been achieved and all there is left to do is lie and accept the pitiful state of ennui that is my being - now that all the passion and fervour for a life I was once thought I could achieve has been snuffed out.

I lie in this state for longer than I have been sentient for I know that only now am I truly awake, now that I understand my own being, only now as I drift in and out of consciousness do I understand all that has been lost to me the hours I thought I was alive.

“Leland?”

My hazy land of simplicity and understanding suddenly sharpens into focus as I see her standing across the clearing from me, her hands resting upon a tree trunk.

I jump upright with an electric twitch and drag myself away from her until my back bumps against a tree. Her face contorts in anguish as she sees me do this.

“I’m sorry, Leland, it wasn’t me you know that, right?” she asks me pleadingly.

In a forgotten corner of my mind I know she’s right, but I can’t bring myself to feel compassion. All I know is that when she is here sometimes I heal and sometimes I hurt.

I watch her warily from my shadowy tree trunk as she steps further into the clearing. She is dressed in nothing but a night shirt and her feet are dirty to the point of blackness.

She gazes at me for a long moment before she speaks, “She’s done it again, hasn’t she? You’re different now. You’re cold and you’re distant and you can’t quite bear to look at me.”

I only blink back at her defiantly, attempting to swallow the creeping fear that her eyes will turn to that glinting emerald malice before I am forced to turn away and look towards the sodden ground.

“It hurts, you know,” her voice wavers as she continues, “It hurts to see everyone I love turn away from me, it hurts to not be close to the people I care about or the people I could care about if I had more time.” My eyes flash up towards her again as she says this but she doesn’t see, she is staring at her writhing fingers turning around and around each other, “It hurts that those I love don’t want me because of her. It just hurts. All the time.”

She takes a deep shuddering breath and takes yet another step into the clearing so now she is completely bathed in moonlight and she finally looks at me again with her eyes dripping with a sadness and a kindness at the same time.

“But it’s different with you, a different kind of pain and I don’t know if I can bear it anymore, I don’t know if I can bear it from you.”

I am so torn inside my own mind and my body that I can hardly remind myself to breathe as she continues, our eyes now locked as her words swallow us whole.

“But I can see she hurts you too, probably even more than she hurts me… and I don’t want to hurt you Leland, I really don’t, you’ve got to believe me.”

Her eyes peer at me pleadingly and the cold cruelty of Vanessa seems to melt over and pool instead with a tragic beauty that could only stem from someone as pure as Eve and I feel my heart shatter in two as Eve’s words begin to poor forth with no sense of restraint or reserve.

“I hate it. I hate it when your eyes glass over ‘cause you can see him, I hate it when your arms circle around yourself as if you can feel a cold that isn’t there, I hate it when your breath falls heavy and out of time like this great weight has crashed down on you.”

And here she pauses and she stares at me for an age as her eyes sparkle with tears she refuses to let loose as she appears to contemplate everything she knows.

“So I think I could do it. Because of all that I think I could do it. I could leave you alone forever, even though my heart would be dragging along behind you on a piece of string, I could do it.”

She stops and she waits.

And I don’t say anything.

I never say anything; I am thrown back to the night by the roadside when Craig’s life and mine lay in my hands and on my tongue and I threw them away without a second glance. My words choke in my throat as my bleeding chest chooses the words that my mind can’t fathom and I remain silent.

When Eve speaks again her voice is hopeless and empty, “Is that what you want? Is that what you want from me?”

My mouth refuses to move and I can see Craig laughing by the road side and I hear my silence and his accusation and I see the black tar blood pour from his wound because I was silent.

I shake my head.

“No.” I choke out, starved for breath and conviction. “No, I need you, I need this- this salvation and I need to be healed and it’s worth all the hurt. In the end, it’s all worth it.”

Eve’s tears flow down her cheeks in a soft and steady flow and as she comes and lies next to me they rub off against my collar and I am reminded of the first day I met her when we fell asleep and our lives were not so terrible whilst we were together.