Lily

“Lily.”

His voice was glass, intricate shapes and symbols carved out to make words. I couldn’t look at him, but I didn’t have to. I felt him next to me. I felt his eyes, a dark blue that mirrored the ocean; I felt them on me, digging and burning holes into the side of my face. And still I couldn’t look.

I didn’t know why he was here. He shouldn’t have been here. The world was sleeping, and he should have been too. Twinkles and blinks of light flickered and flashed above, but their beauty didn’t comfort me like they normally do. Not tonight. Something in the air was off tonight; it didn’t blow the same as the others. I knew it touched my face I couldn’t sense the shivers that it normally sends slithering through my bones. Specks of water splashed up and licked at my bare feet, but the wetness didn’t sink in. I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel much of anything tonight.

“Lily. Look at me.”

I couldn’t. He would make me forget. He would make me want to stop. He would make me sane, and that scared me above all. I could see his expression through the horizon. He was staring intently at me, pleading with me by his eyes for me to spare a glance his way, but I held back. One look from him was all it took. I had already built up so much courage to bring myself to the pier tonight, that I couldn’t allow him to take it all away again with mere look.

“Speak to me, at least.”

I didn’t know if I could do that either. I hadn’t planned on ever speaking again, and I wondered if my vocal cords had already shut down. But I didn’t open my mouth to test it out, I simply sat and stayed and remained silent and still as I was. I knew it was enraging him, and maybe part of me wanted him angry, so he would give up and walk away and make everything easier for me. But I knew him too well, and I knew he wouldn’t leave.

I must have looked as if I was in a trance at this point. I fixated my eyes on the moon, and I hadn’t moved them since they locked. I suppose I wanted to look lost in thought, I was half the time anyway. But I knew that didn’t fool him either. It angered me sometimes how well he knew me, how he knew my ins and outs and every trick up my sleeve. My parents didn’t even know me that well, and they had known me since birth. This boy has only known me for a mere seven months. How could he know me through and through, and have excavated every cave that dwelled deep in the back of my mind, holding the most gruesome pieces of my thoughts and memories?

“You can ignore me all you want. I’m not leaving. I’m not going anywhere at all.”

For a second, I almost spoke. And for another second, I almost turned to look towards him, but I caught myself. I felt the wind whip and lash around, swaying and swatting my hair around me this way and that, obscuring my vision for moment after moment, eventually clearing its way out again. Each time a strand of hair disappeared from my vision, the first thing I saw was the moon. I had always been so envious of the moon. It was so pretty and perfectly shaped, and glowed with a beauty that was seen with the heart rather than the eyes. But it was bruised and beaten and banged up with imperfections, and lived in the shadow of the sun, always coming as second best. And yet, still it was beautiful and perfect. For the first movement since I sat down, I grazed my fingers across my scars gently. How I envied its beauty so.

“They don’t define you, you know.” I looked at him. I couldn’t catch myself quickly enough this time, and our eyes met. His eyes, deeper than the waves and as rough to match, drilled their gaze to mine, as green as the pine needles that lay on the forest floor. He seemed relieved that I finally broke my concentration of disregarding him. I heard rather than saw a sigh of relief flow from his lips.

“What?” I spoke nearly above a whisper, but I knew he heard me. And even if he hadn’t, I knew he would have known what to say. He always knew what to say. And sometimes I hated that about him. But I couldn’t help but love it at the same time. He noticeably moved himself closer to me, blocking the wind from the west.

“Those,” he pointed to my wrist, “are not the outline of who you are.” His voice was stable and strong, and I heard the urgency in his voice, but I tried not to notice. I shift my attention downward to the lines along my skin. I thought they were pretty, like the lines on a piece of paper, just waiting to be written on. Tentatively, my finger traced each one, as I did often. From the corner of my eye, I saw his hand approaching mine, and he laid it atop mine, stopping the tracing I was doing. I couldn’t feel his hand, but I knew there was a warmness emitting from it. He was always warm, and I was always cold, and a bitter cold at that, but he always seemed to put up with it.

I stared at his hand for a long minute, mesmerized as if I had never seen a human reach out to me before. I began to follow his hand up to his arm, and eventually my eyesight climbed its way back to his eyes, and I felt more immobilized than I ever had. Everything was in that sea, all the bad things I’ve done to myself reflected back at me, almost too quickly, and I shut my eyes and turned away. I was afraid, but I didn’t know of what. I only knew I was scared, I couldn’t feel the fear.

“Lily, I can be here for you, I am here for you. Don’t you understand how much you mean to me? Don’t you understand that I love you?” My eyes felt hot, burning hot, and until I cracked open my eyes, I hadn’t know that I was crying profusely, and I began to wonder when I had begun.

“Don’t you understand?” I managed to butcher out through my menacing sobs and bursts of hot tears. His hand was now firmly grasped around mine, and mine still lay atop my scars. “I am a mess. You don’t want to love someone like me. You shouldn’t.” His grip tightened, and it shook atop me.

“Whether I can, can’t, or shouldn’t, I can’t and won’t stop loving you. You are so much more than just lines on your wrist. You are so much more than what all those people have said, you are not those words. You are you, you are Lily and you are the most beautiful human being I have ever laid my eyes on. Why can’t you see that?” The urgency slipped from his mouth and bled into a plea, and I laid the guilt on myself for making him feel this way, for making him worry, for making him want to love me. I was sorry for anyone I had ever done that to.

My voice shook, but I couldn’t tell if it was a result of my heaves of sobs or my trembling body. I was small, and it appeared as if I was possessed by the way my body jerked itself back and forth. The part of my body shaking more than anything else was my hand.

“Because I know myself. I know the thoughts that pass through my head. I know the feelings that I get when I hear their words or look at myself in the mirror. I am not beautiful because I am ugly inside. I have hatred in my veins and I don’t know how to extract it. I’m always cold because I’ve never been warm. Don’t you see? These lines are the only thing that understands what I’ve been through because they’re a part of me. They’re the one piece of me I was able to control. You say you love me but how could I know? I don’t know what love feels like. They all say that love is what makes the world go ‘round. Well, if we’re judging by my world, then I don’t need love, because love has never saved me before.” I spat out my last words as if they left a bitter taste on my tongue.

He stared at me, though I couldn’t blame him. In the jumble of word vomit that had just erupted from my mouth, I said things that I had promised myself that I would never admit to but I did. And I couldn’t stop myself; it was like I was dying to tell someone and let them not understand. None of it really mattered anyway.

I sobbed and sobbed, and he kept staring and holding my wrist. I hadn’t the need to feel humiliated, I couldn’t feel things. Eventually, he placed his other hand on the side of my head and pushed my down on his shoulder, and I didn’t resist. I leaned on him and cried my heart dry and until my eyes were bloodshot and bruised from the inside out.

When my wails of self pity drained away, I remained still on his shoulder, too tired to move and too scared of what I would do next. I constantly felt so unsure of myself, and it worried me to no end to know that I wasn’t in control of myself, let alone my thoughts. The black of the sky was lightening, and I knew I missed my chance, at least for tonight. Beside me, I heard his breathing, and he had been quiet for so long that I had wondered if my crying had made him go deaf. But with a sudden heave of air, I began to feel his voice vibrate through his entire body.

“Lily.”

I said nothing and I didn’t move an inch, but I gave him my attention, and somehow he understood that I was listening.

“I have no idea what’s in your head. I don’t know what you dream about, I don’t know what your deepest secrets or your worst fears are. I don’t know what you hate about yourself, and I don’t know what you like about yourself. But do you want to know something about me?” He paused, giving me time to answer, but I remained quiet. “I don’t care. I don’t care if you hate yourself, I don’t care if you love yourself. I don’t care if you’re ugly inside; I don’t care if you’re ugly outside. I am in love with you and I hope one day you can understand that that means that I won’t desert you. I won’t leave you alone, I won’t let you hate yourself, and I won’t let all those people say those things about you. You are so much more than what you think you are. You are not those scars on your damned wrists. You are not the words that people say. You are everything in between and so much more. You are the color of the sky before the sun rises. You are the sound of the rain against my window. You are everything that I love in life; you are all that I love in life. And I know these too are just words. Words are nothing; inadequate and misleading. But in time I will show you that I’m true.”

For once in my life, nothing was in my head. No words, no criticisms, no plans or plots, no schemes. I was empty. It was as if his words had, momentarily, erased everything I ever knew, or thought I knew, about life.

“I will do all this for you with no questions asked. But you need to make me one promise.” I said nothing, but just as before, through the way the air felt, he could tell that I was listening for his words. “I never want you see you down on this pier ever again. I never want to see you down by the beach or ocean. I don’t want to see you by the rivers, lakes, or pools. I will teach you how to swim, and even then, you shouldn’t have a reason to go there by yourself. You mean too much to me for me to let you go so easily. Please, promise me that.”

The begging of his voice that scratched its way through earlier came crawling back, and I felt myself begin to feel guilty once more, but I didn’t want to. My scars began to burn under my touch and his, and I resented the heat.

“I promise.”

His hand above my wrist lightened its weight, but it didn’t leave. It felt as if it was there for comfort, rather than to hide something. I still thought my scars were beautiful, and I didn’t think that would ever change. I will always think they are the only beautiful part of me. And I would want him to see that beauty too.

I looked out and watched beyond the horizon, and stared at the sun that was beginning to rise. The sea below my feet splashed up, and I felt it.