Heavenly

A headache like this could’ve been a million things in another life. A space shuttle burning up upon reentry, six American heroes roasted to a perfect medium rare - plunged into the ocean. A love hanging by a thread and severed by another, C2 vertebrae catches on the too thin rope and what hits the ground first is the heart on the sleeve (and a steady drip drip drip). Or a walk and a laugh and a soak in the sun, an afternoon interrupted by the venom of an adder and a boiling in your blood. Or maybe not a single of any and all horrors could compare because really nothing is quite like you.

Nothing quite like the dried blood peppering your cupid’s bow and the corners of your lips that cracks every time you pull a sneer (often) and how I can’t help but wonder how your septum is still fucking intact and how I squirm every time I do. Nothing quite like the three am nights when I’d find you slobbering on my doorstep (also often) and take you in and scrape dirt from your fingernails and vomit from your hair only to find my pantry empty and you gone when morning came around.

Nothing like the wisps of amber, soft and drizzled down the front of your shirt (now sliced and shredded, you always did wish I’d declaw the damn thing) and how this morning I found half her tail, blood matted and bone spouting, and beside it an invitation in your handwriting. How this isn’t the first time.

But even more than that, there’s nothing, nothing like the words drawn from the lungs as ashen as your eyes. The agenda in your smoker’s rasp is as real as the branches holding up our limbs or the asphalt far below our feet. You may have an angel’s name and a face to match, but you’re not as holy as a deity ought to be.

Each and every syllable is another hammer to my skull. I wonder if you’re drawing blood and I just can’t trust my ears.

“Ella, sweetheart.” My knuckles are ghost white. I hadn’t been listening, but of all the times to start.

“Raphael,” and it’s a snarl. His laugh is as easy as the breeze. I want to spit through the gap in his chipped tooth smile, the one front and center and ragged and fresh.

“Raphael.” You make it sound like a dirty word.

Nothing quite like the frame of grime, bruises, or sleepless nights (we may never know) around your wide doe eyes, their hazel betraying nothing near genuine.

“You know there must be some way out of here.” Of the streets where your heart picks up the pace regardless of whether the sun’s out or not? Where you muffle your footsteps and keep your eyes on the pavement, oil slicked (and mottled with the stains we all know are there, but we never, ever speak of?) Out of the rut where our nights are all redlights and sky highs and the days are limited to minimum wage and a sick, sick desperation? These are the gutters that brought you into this world and you’d better believe they’ll bury you in ‘em. He shouldn’t be saying the words I couldn’t.

“What makes you think I’d want one.”

He takes a long breath, sucking in enough pollutants to last a lifetime. Like he doesn’t already have enough in his bloodstream.

“In a town like this, we don’t have any time for heroes and we’re definitely running out of room for ghosts. Yeah, I’m sure it’s paradise.” God, I’d kill for a Tylenol or something.

“They all want their fingers on your trigger and they won’t stop at nothing.” Except it’s hard to think someone else has gotten their hands quite as filthy as yours.

Summer of fifth grade comes to mind and I have a nasty habit of reliving the past.

You’re a deer caught in the headlights and an accident waiting to happen. Anyone could see the animal in the whites of your eyes, sunken far too deep in your then cherub’s face, or the ravines of your ribcage (plucked clean by the vultures, you were dinner, tender and raw). You’ve the power of an earthquake in your core and the tremors have almost knocked the gunmetal from your sweating palms enough times to have lost count of.

I’m no better, I suppose. It’s like four in the morning all over again and I’m slave to the nightmare. Complete with limbs like deadweight and, God, I’d really just like to breathe again.

You’ve done the deed and it’s on your way through the automatic doors we meet again on different terms. You’ve got a hazel ocean flashflood on your hands and you must be the youngest in all the city. Fuck lemonade and hopscotch and dividing by the decimal. And you can just forget about a Sunday on the beach. No, you’ve found harmony in spilling blood in over that last bite of bread. Reached Nirvana through robbing the convenience store around the corner.

Despite enlightenment, I can smell the fear on your breath and you’re gone. I watch your sneakers disappear with dinner and whatever was left of you. That was a long time ago now.

Nothing quite like how I’m so unsure if the bulge where your shirt and your boxers overlaps is telling of the touch of a barrel and a bullet or a product of good thoughts, but how I wouldn’t be surprised to find either (or both.)

“Name of an angel, you’re such a fucking joke. What's your punchline?.” I know you’re not here to sing songs and talk politics and although you might waste my time, you wouldn’t yours.

Your freckles dance into your pout and you nestle a hand into where your heart would be. Like you have one.

“All serious on my end. Give me some credit, Ella. I think we both know I’m above that.” I think he’s waiting for me to laugh. “No, I think we’ve both had our fair share of dark humour, if you will. And I’m pretty fed up, and you are too, I think. You’ll hear me out now.”

I want to take in everything and anything else. The gaping intestine of the roadkill beside the bus stop or the halo of pollution that makes the clouds look so much whiter than they really are. You have nothing I could want and nothing I have I would give and you’ve never been anything but trouble trouble trouble since the very first day we spoke (and spilled blood.) And still I’m not prepared.

“Let’s run away together.” There’s not even room for a headache. It’s all white noise.
“Fuck you.”

“Let’s up and leave.” There’s something earnest in your rasp, something hopeful too. “There’s nothing for you here. Nothing they won’t take. Or haven’t already.”

I want to tell you to stop it. His eyes light up and it’s like he’s won the lottery after all these years of losing tickets. He’s treading thin ice and it’s like he’s the richest man in the world.

“There’s no secret you can keep from me you know. Can’t keep from me what daddy’s done or where mommy’s been.”

I’m breathless and I can almost feel the knuckles hard against my organs.

“Can’t keep from me how empty you’ve been or what they did to you during recess.”

Don’t make me touch you there, god, please don’t touch me there, don’t make me touch you there, god, please don’t touch me there.

“Or the reason old Jamie’s gone missing.”

Fuck. You.

But you’re right. Of course, you’re always right. I might’ve well have been sobbing on your shoulder all this time and it’s as if you held me when no one would and told me everything would be okay and pressed the red button on the tape recorder. You’re right and I want out.

There’s a kind of triumph in your eyes and that blood cracking, septum burning sneer has graced your face once more because you really do know me too well. I’m empty and I need you in the form of a fist fight or double suicide and this is a special kind of tough love.

“And no one else will leave. Except me.” And no one could love you like I do. I'm your very best friend and a fucking last resort.

But of course. They’re petitioning to enlarge the cemetery for what they swear up and down will be the last time and fuck me, you’re right again. Every maggot to take their first breath in a cataract or bloodied sinew will take their last exactly where they started, just like the carcass they’ll breed on.

I’ll never win.

I’m lost when your feet hit the earth and ruined rock crumbles away beneath your sneakers (shaken the forest to its roots.) You’re glowing beneath the street lamp’s shine, its rays peppered a grimy yellow by the insects who never made it home. You hold up an open palm and it’s another one of your invitations. Funny, I’m almost tempted to spit again.

The sun’s nearly set behind you and I could’ve sworn I saw a halo. Of pink, yellow, blue, green, and orange and all the past has been forgotten.

Each night with the rise of the moon comes the revelation of an empire. From a wooden tower I watch the families collecting in a parking lot. A single scream rings.

Past the swing sets and ring of trees and the colored kites lurks those put on this world to serve and protect and kill on sight. Those crown jewels, those princes of the law. Around these parts, they all come with nasty coke habits to fuel and curious bump in their paychecks that no one can really explain.

Across the street sit two young ladies on the job, their skirts hiked up and rosy pouts on their faces at the prospect of a long, hard night. And they come and go and come and go with every passerby, be them suited or barefoot or reeking or wasted. Who wouldn’t admire their dedication.

I think of your halo. I think of your chipping smile, your endless presence. And I think that you just might be an angel after all.

Gabriel, I take your hand.