DamagedLemon
Bluelighter
I know it's a bit tl;dr but this is Words, right? Just thought I'd share.
Sadie
Sadie is made wonderfully – that is if you believe that people are made, in the way that something in me tells me I do. She has long, dark, wavy hair and usually wears it down as if it has its own purpose in life. Sadie has sad eyes, dark and large and deep. Pondering and lost in a faraway place. You will be lucky if you get her attention mid-conversation, that’s how much it wavers. She said that was because she was always on a valium or two, sometimes three, to keep her emotions in place.
What do you mean in place?
Just... not foraging through blankets in my bed, not tossing and turning and not in and out of people and places, that’s what I mean. Clean, clear and like in the Belle and Sebastian song “Take a walk in the park, take a valium pill, read the letter you got from the memory girl”. I can no longer read letters or take walks without working myself into a terrifying state, heart-thumping and fingers and toes cold, everywhere numb.
That day when Sadie and I sat in the coffee house smoking cigarettes and an occasional joint and drinking coffee there was a strange silence between us, like we understood each other or we were in fact, each other. The motion of the cigarette pursed in between her lips and then her hand driving it away was slightly beautiful and slightly troubling all at the same time. The troubling part being how beautiful it looked. At that point I wasn’t sure if I had gone crazy, if Sadie was I or if she really existed. I chuckled to myself slightly at the thought of people looking at me (if Sadie wasn’t real) talking to myself, thinking I was insane and piercing my soul with their judgmental eyes. But then I asked Sadie if she was real and she looked at me like I had indeed gone mad. So I gave that a rest because there was no point pursuing it.
I fantasise about death a lot. In my strange mind I would like to travel light. And the lightest form of travel out of this tragic life is through euphoria. So I imagine my eyes would be closed, I would be at the highest state of peace and I would be carefree and careless, like I was two years old all over again – but even better. Because at two years old my mother took care of me in case I got run over by a big car. But this time it would be just me, all alone in my state. I imagine first darkness would overcome me, a bit scary and overwhelming but I would get used to it, and then slowly, coloured shapes twisting in and out like a cape almost at random.
And then - pictures, beautiful images and creations. Slowly my breath would leave me (Would it be painful? In euphoria you don’t really feel pain) and I would go into that gorgeous place. Because if life contains pain and suffering and very little happiness surely it is sensible to assume that death would bring about quite the opposite. I imagine I would be in a place not too warm, not too cold, where I can wear my favourite clothes and bring along my laptop with my favourite songs– materialistic, I know, but things like that are the only things left that make me feel like me amongst all this hullabaloo. It would be a big house with a big garden where everybody I’ve ever cared about properly would live with me and I would have no abandonment issues and nobody can abandon anybody because that is the place you go to when you die.
And if that didn’t happen it wouldn’t matter, I don’t think, because I won’t really know until it happens and right now it is a fantasy and I like it. And if that didn’t happen then perhaps nonexistence will, and if you think about it, if you think about no more getting up in the mornings with splitting headaches and aching and yearning for more euphoria and more substances (or even the slightest bit of relief), if you think about it, it’s really not so bad.
Sadie looked up from her coffee cup and for the first time since I’ve known her she smiled contentedly and peacefully and all of her hair and her eyes and her beauty shone like a bright, white light.
--
Hey, you with the music on.
She stood at the train platform, heart and soul all numb from feeling, body all numb from the cold. She looked a mess with black stains around her eyes, but alright, an alright mess. Long dark hair, small and beautiful stature, you want to but you better not look her in the eye or she might start to cry. She stared down at her shoes; not remembering where she got them from, wondering if that mattered. If that didn’t then what does?
The train to nowhere was due anytime she wanted. She wasn’t sure where she was going so she sat down on – more like flopped onto - a bench half-heartedly and wearily brought out a pack of cigarettes. Any escapism would be good right about now, but unfortunately the world is as it is and in public at 9 in the morning you better only be smoking cigarettes or you get stared at.
She lit one up with quite a big flame from her lighter, almost burning her eyebrow. She quite liked that feeling, but as the cigarette was lighted there was no need to hold it up any longer than necessary. After all, there were people around, lots and lots of people. She tried to behave as normally as she knew how - she had never been at a train platform at 9 in the morning before and it was terrible pretending. She puffed on the cigarette and she inhaled and exhaled purposefully, like each moment meant something other-worldly and felt a little bit more invincible. But then the people boarded the train that had just arrived and she was left all alone.
In that aloneness she stopped puffing on her cigarette and stared at it lying limp as a carcass in her hand. The grey-ash looked like some form of sandcastle a child would build, and the red burning bit inside of that grey-ash sandcastle was burning everything to pieces. Bit by bit, moment by moment it was all decaying and she couldn’t shake the feeling that everybody was a sandcastle and we all had a fiery red inside of us that will burn us all to the core in the end no matter how hard we tried to imagine a life full of purpose.
This depressed her but it wasn’t her fault. It was like her mind was locked inside of itself, a solitary cell, and she wanted to - she needed to get out before she exploded. The most soul-enveloping thing about being alive is not being able to get out of your own body.
As the cold, sharp air hit her face harshly with every thought she gathered, she decided to board the next train. Where to? She wasn’t sure but that didn’t matter. Trains are warmer than the outdoors and that was all she could think of at that point.
-
The train made odd chuffing and mechanical sounds as it stopped; the noises made her uncomfortable and reminded her of a broken-down machine that needed repairing. Suddenly, the quietness disappeared and there were people going onto the train and coming off it, with chitter-chatter and smiley faces and some angry and some apathetic and some sad. All of that made her feel giddy and she felt if they walked fast enough and with enough energy towards her all the bones in her body would break without her permission. This made her a little angry; she thought she had the right to control the bones in her body, if anything.
She climbed onto the train, almost missing a step and Excuse me, Sorry, Sorry, she said as she fumbled to find a seat. Now seat-finding is a difficult process if you are not sure how long you are going to be on the train for. If you were going to be on it for just a short while sitting anywhere would be good, but if you were going to be on it for a long time you needed somewhere you felt safe. And everybody knows finding an indoor place with people in it whilst feeling safe is almost impossible.
Her heart was thumping and she was tired. Cabin upon cabin she walked and finally got to one where there was hardly anybody in it. She found a window seat and sat in it cautiously – hands feeling the seat and eyes alert and looking around - as if expecting the cabin to suddenly be filled with people as soon as she sat down. Her luck was good, it seemed, because the train carried on its chuffing and moving and her cabin was still not fully filled. She laid her head back and closed her eyes, placed a pair of earphones into her ears and pressed the play button on her mp3 player. Kings of Convenience came on and that made her smile. She stayed like this a while, humming softly and letting the light, preciously comforting music wrap her little body, almost seeping into her soul and in those moments it was almost as though her soul and her entire being would suddenly become light and precious and lovely.
“Hey” said a voice that wasn’t part of her music. She thought it must be someone speaking to someone else; after all she couldn’t be the only person in that cabin, so she ignored it.
“Hey, you, with the music on” it came again.
She took her earphones off and the old, tiresome world returned into her ears and into her head and when she opened her eyes she realised there was no one else around her, but as she turned around there was the face of a startlingly gorgeous boy. He had soft brown hair that the sun was smiling upon and in some moments when they turned golden brown he looked as though he had a halo. His blue-grey eyes were transfixed upon her, as if mesmerized by her very existence.
“Were you talking to me?” She asked of those blue-grey eyes.
“Why, yes, of course. There’s nobody else around. Am I disturbing you? I hope not.”
“No, no, not at all. I was just listening to some Iron and Wine, they make me feel at ease.”
“They do the same for me.”
Their eyes met and they smiled at each other shyly, and her long dark hair even seemed to glimmer a bit. She offered him the seat beside her and he politely but eagerly took it.
“Where are you going?” He asked her.
“Going? Going, coming, I don’t know anymore. I go places and I arrive in places but mostly I sit and see where they take me. Thinking about going places is far too tiring.”
“Let me guess, when you boarded this train you thought – Let’s see where this train to nowhere takes me.”
“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”
“It’s because I am the same as you. I can just tell.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant, and felt a little insulted at him being so sure he was “the same as her”. He couldn’t possibly have felt the pain she did, could he? Or have the insensitivity of the world lay its awful head upon his shoulders? But at the same time thinking like that was narcissistic of her and so she tried to erase it.
“What do you mean the same as me? You can’t be me; surely nobody can be anybody else. Besides, you can’t come in here and tell me you are the same as me. You with your gorgeousness and me with my terrible black mess.”
“It will take months and maybe years of talking for you to understand what I mean but let’s put it this way, I listen to music for comfort because the sounds the world and its people produce are far too tiring to bear. Even silence is sometimes too overwhelming. Also, there’s hardly anyone here in this cabin and you look sad and I had this overwhelming urge to come and speak to you and tell you it will be alright, you will see.”
This touched her yet left her quite confused. But surely, she thought, surely in this world there must be somebody just like her. If not just like then perhaps a little like. Besides, this strange boy comforted her, even more so then her music did. She decided to stay with him awhile.
“Alright, I know what you mean, I think. Do you want to sit here awhile or are you getting off the train?”
“Oh no no, I have plenty of time to kill. I too boarded the train to nowhere. Did you know that this train to nowhere also goes anywhere? Anytime you want to we can get off and go somewhere nice, and it will be somewhere nice because this train goes anywhere.” He leaned in gently and smiled as he saw her brown eyes light up.
-
“If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?”
“The beach, I think. Somewhere peaceful and quiet. The endless sea would make me feel insignificant and quite lonely but in a way I would like it. And you know, for some reason the sky is even more beautiful when it is just above vast water. Something about the contrast between sky and sea…” She trailed off softly, like she was speaking to herself.
The boy disappeared right then and an empty space took his place where he had just been and then, just as soon as he disappeared he appeared again and the train screeched haltingly into a stop.
“You got it!” He announced suddenly, beaming proudly.
She looked around her, first confused, then bemused, and then utterly bewildered. Vapour had collected against the window beside her because of the cold. They were so beautifully and perfectly placed, holding onto the windowsill as if for dear life. If you glanced around they would be a complete blur but if you looked at them closely they were almost living beings. Living beings that were so content with just hanging out on the windowsill. It was mind-boggling. But past that, past that there was the smooth sand and the green waters and the blue sky and almost nothing else in her sight.
“How did you do that?!”
“Do what? Come on, there’s a beach to explore!” The boy offered her his hand as they stood up at the same time, but she hesitated and shuffled her feet.
“I hardly know you.”
“I know. But hey, look, this train isn’t going anywhere remember? It is going to be here anytime we want to come back.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Alright, then, but just for a while.”
They got off the train and all of a sudden it wasn’t so cold anymore. Her coat was still on but it was the right temperature, it seemed the right time of the day to be on the beach on a cold day, for the sun was shining straight on them and its rays on her skin made her feel alive. It reminded her of the various songs and images and situations she had spent time imagining herself in. Something like driving with the windows down during a sunrise and feeling the air of all of the world in your face, going to France and buying a baguette, things like that.
His hair waved softly in the wind and he was shivering a bit despite the sunshine, so she held his hand a little tighter. Seagulls sang their songs and made their noises and the wind ruffled some distant trees like a fond father and they walked on, feet sinking into sand and occasionally hitting a seashell. Sometimes they bent down to pick one up to admire its beauty. They had an earpiece in their ear each, connected to her music player, and it was an incredible feeling, she thought. Soft comforting melody seeping into not one but two souls this time. Synchronised beauty, shared minds, souls entwined. For those minutes, at least. For those minutes it was absolute bliss, like nothing could touch them, like those minutes would last forever.
As they walked on the seemingly endless beach they encountered a mother and two children, a boy and a girl, who were standing around looking into the ocean. Out of nowhere the boy started to pick up a stick to hit his sister with, and then outraged shouts from the mother were heard. She grimaced as she thought of how much she disliked children.
“Not a fan, huh?” He must have noticed the look on her face.
“They’re alright, I suppose, to a certain degree. They get annoying.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes though I can’t help but wonder if it is because I am insanely jealous of their simplicity. Life was easier when it was all ice cream and candy.”
She nodded.
This boy got her thinking about things. Not terrible things like she always got herself thinking about, but good ones. She liked this feeling, this feeling with him and the beach and the endlessness of everything, and she hadn’t properly liked anything in a long time.
As they walked on they approached an abandoned watch tower that looked like it would be reasonably warm inside, so they decided to enter it. Night was gradually falling and dusk that evening was spectacular – different palettes of colour was painted all over the sky. If God existed, it was as though He had reserved the best sunset for that very evening with a careful but artistic swish-swish of His brush.
They sat themselves down on the ground and slumped against a wall comfortably. Within their reach was a thick and warm duvet, albeit a little dirty.
“Cigarette?” She took one out and pursed it between her lips and held the pack out towards him.
“Yes, please, that would be perfect. Light me up after yours? Big flame, I like big flames.”
She told him about the grey-ash sandcastle, and he told her he understood, and in his blue-grey eyes she could tell he did. He really did.
“I could be safe with you, I don’t know how you are so sure of everything but I want to escape into you. There would be no more black nothingness in me. But people always leave and precious moments always pass and the longer I live the more (people, events, time periods) I miss and the sadder and more tired I become. Nobody’s really here for anybody and I am lonely.” A tear tried its very best to escape the corner of her eye as she became nostalgic and the reasons why she was standing sadly at that train platform all came rushing back like a sudden kick to the head.
“Don’t think about it now. Tonight we have the stars and tonight we have each other and we don’t have to go anywhere and I am not going anywhere.” He squeezed her hand tightly and then pulled the duvet over them so that they were snuggled nice and warm.
They were situated like this a while, star-gazing and considering the futility of life and although both their bodies trembled at the thought of losing each other their minds reprimanded them for being too attached to someone they’d just met.
Slowly she got sleepy, and tired of thinking. Mostly she was tired of being miserable. After all, she had done a whole day’s worth of thinking, and before that day she had had many days’ worth of thinking and she couldn’t possibly do any more.
“I’ll think about it tomorrow”, she murmured to herself, as sleep overcame her like a big and black but warm blanket.
He smiled at the broken sleeping girl in her arms and held her tight, drifting off into sleep himself, wishing there was a way they could fall asleep together and see each other in their dreams so not one second could be lost for tomorrow is a hollow thought and nobody knows what tomorrow might bring.
Sadie
Sadie is made wonderfully – that is if you believe that people are made, in the way that something in me tells me I do. She has long, dark, wavy hair and usually wears it down as if it has its own purpose in life. Sadie has sad eyes, dark and large and deep. Pondering and lost in a faraway place. You will be lucky if you get her attention mid-conversation, that’s how much it wavers. She said that was because she was always on a valium or two, sometimes three, to keep her emotions in place.
What do you mean in place?
Just... not foraging through blankets in my bed, not tossing and turning and not in and out of people and places, that’s what I mean. Clean, clear and like in the Belle and Sebastian song “Take a walk in the park, take a valium pill, read the letter you got from the memory girl”. I can no longer read letters or take walks without working myself into a terrifying state, heart-thumping and fingers and toes cold, everywhere numb.
That day when Sadie and I sat in the coffee house smoking cigarettes and an occasional joint and drinking coffee there was a strange silence between us, like we understood each other or we were in fact, each other. The motion of the cigarette pursed in between her lips and then her hand driving it away was slightly beautiful and slightly troubling all at the same time. The troubling part being how beautiful it looked. At that point I wasn’t sure if I had gone crazy, if Sadie was I or if she really existed. I chuckled to myself slightly at the thought of people looking at me (if Sadie wasn’t real) talking to myself, thinking I was insane and piercing my soul with their judgmental eyes. But then I asked Sadie if she was real and she looked at me like I had indeed gone mad. So I gave that a rest because there was no point pursuing it.
I fantasise about death a lot. In my strange mind I would like to travel light. And the lightest form of travel out of this tragic life is through euphoria. So I imagine my eyes would be closed, I would be at the highest state of peace and I would be carefree and careless, like I was two years old all over again – but even better. Because at two years old my mother took care of me in case I got run over by a big car. But this time it would be just me, all alone in my state. I imagine first darkness would overcome me, a bit scary and overwhelming but I would get used to it, and then slowly, coloured shapes twisting in and out like a cape almost at random.
And then - pictures, beautiful images and creations. Slowly my breath would leave me (Would it be painful? In euphoria you don’t really feel pain) and I would go into that gorgeous place. Because if life contains pain and suffering and very little happiness surely it is sensible to assume that death would bring about quite the opposite. I imagine I would be in a place not too warm, not too cold, where I can wear my favourite clothes and bring along my laptop with my favourite songs– materialistic, I know, but things like that are the only things left that make me feel like me amongst all this hullabaloo. It would be a big house with a big garden where everybody I’ve ever cared about properly would live with me and I would have no abandonment issues and nobody can abandon anybody because that is the place you go to when you die.
And if that didn’t happen it wouldn’t matter, I don’t think, because I won’t really know until it happens and right now it is a fantasy and I like it. And if that didn’t happen then perhaps nonexistence will, and if you think about it, if you think about no more getting up in the mornings with splitting headaches and aching and yearning for more euphoria and more substances (or even the slightest bit of relief), if you think about it, it’s really not so bad.
Sadie looked up from her coffee cup and for the first time since I’ve known her she smiled contentedly and peacefully and all of her hair and her eyes and her beauty shone like a bright, white light.
--
Hey, you with the music on.
She stood at the train platform, heart and soul all numb from feeling, body all numb from the cold. She looked a mess with black stains around her eyes, but alright, an alright mess. Long dark hair, small and beautiful stature, you want to but you better not look her in the eye or she might start to cry. She stared down at her shoes; not remembering where she got them from, wondering if that mattered. If that didn’t then what does?
The train to nowhere was due anytime she wanted. She wasn’t sure where she was going so she sat down on – more like flopped onto - a bench half-heartedly and wearily brought out a pack of cigarettes. Any escapism would be good right about now, but unfortunately the world is as it is and in public at 9 in the morning you better only be smoking cigarettes or you get stared at.
She lit one up with quite a big flame from her lighter, almost burning her eyebrow. She quite liked that feeling, but as the cigarette was lighted there was no need to hold it up any longer than necessary. After all, there were people around, lots and lots of people. She tried to behave as normally as she knew how - she had never been at a train platform at 9 in the morning before and it was terrible pretending. She puffed on the cigarette and she inhaled and exhaled purposefully, like each moment meant something other-worldly and felt a little bit more invincible. But then the people boarded the train that had just arrived and she was left all alone.
In that aloneness she stopped puffing on her cigarette and stared at it lying limp as a carcass in her hand. The grey-ash looked like some form of sandcastle a child would build, and the red burning bit inside of that grey-ash sandcastle was burning everything to pieces. Bit by bit, moment by moment it was all decaying and she couldn’t shake the feeling that everybody was a sandcastle and we all had a fiery red inside of us that will burn us all to the core in the end no matter how hard we tried to imagine a life full of purpose.
This depressed her but it wasn’t her fault. It was like her mind was locked inside of itself, a solitary cell, and she wanted to - she needed to get out before she exploded. The most soul-enveloping thing about being alive is not being able to get out of your own body.
As the cold, sharp air hit her face harshly with every thought she gathered, she decided to board the next train. Where to? She wasn’t sure but that didn’t matter. Trains are warmer than the outdoors and that was all she could think of at that point.
-
The train made odd chuffing and mechanical sounds as it stopped; the noises made her uncomfortable and reminded her of a broken-down machine that needed repairing. Suddenly, the quietness disappeared and there were people going onto the train and coming off it, with chitter-chatter and smiley faces and some angry and some apathetic and some sad. All of that made her feel giddy and she felt if they walked fast enough and with enough energy towards her all the bones in her body would break without her permission. This made her a little angry; she thought she had the right to control the bones in her body, if anything.
She climbed onto the train, almost missing a step and Excuse me, Sorry, Sorry, she said as she fumbled to find a seat. Now seat-finding is a difficult process if you are not sure how long you are going to be on the train for. If you were going to be on it for just a short while sitting anywhere would be good, but if you were going to be on it for a long time you needed somewhere you felt safe. And everybody knows finding an indoor place with people in it whilst feeling safe is almost impossible.
Her heart was thumping and she was tired. Cabin upon cabin she walked and finally got to one where there was hardly anybody in it. She found a window seat and sat in it cautiously – hands feeling the seat and eyes alert and looking around - as if expecting the cabin to suddenly be filled with people as soon as she sat down. Her luck was good, it seemed, because the train carried on its chuffing and moving and her cabin was still not fully filled. She laid her head back and closed her eyes, placed a pair of earphones into her ears and pressed the play button on her mp3 player. Kings of Convenience came on and that made her smile. She stayed like this a while, humming softly and letting the light, preciously comforting music wrap her little body, almost seeping into her soul and in those moments it was almost as though her soul and her entire being would suddenly become light and precious and lovely.
“Hey” said a voice that wasn’t part of her music. She thought it must be someone speaking to someone else; after all she couldn’t be the only person in that cabin, so she ignored it.
“Hey, you, with the music on” it came again.
She took her earphones off and the old, tiresome world returned into her ears and into her head and when she opened her eyes she realised there was no one else around her, but as she turned around there was the face of a startlingly gorgeous boy. He had soft brown hair that the sun was smiling upon and in some moments when they turned golden brown he looked as though he had a halo. His blue-grey eyes were transfixed upon her, as if mesmerized by her very existence.
“Were you talking to me?” She asked of those blue-grey eyes.
“Why, yes, of course. There’s nobody else around. Am I disturbing you? I hope not.”
“No, no, not at all. I was just listening to some Iron and Wine, they make me feel at ease.”
“They do the same for me.”
Their eyes met and they smiled at each other shyly, and her long dark hair even seemed to glimmer a bit. She offered him the seat beside her and he politely but eagerly took it.
“Where are you going?” He asked her.
“Going? Going, coming, I don’t know anymore. I go places and I arrive in places but mostly I sit and see where they take me. Thinking about going places is far too tiring.”
“Let me guess, when you boarded this train you thought – Let’s see where this train to nowhere takes me.”
“Yeah, that’s right. How did you know?”
“It’s because I am the same as you. I can just tell.”
She wasn’t sure what he meant, and felt a little insulted at him being so sure he was “the same as her”. He couldn’t possibly have felt the pain she did, could he? Or have the insensitivity of the world lay its awful head upon his shoulders? But at the same time thinking like that was narcissistic of her and so she tried to erase it.
“What do you mean the same as me? You can’t be me; surely nobody can be anybody else. Besides, you can’t come in here and tell me you are the same as me. You with your gorgeousness and me with my terrible black mess.”
“It will take months and maybe years of talking for you to understand what I mean but let’s put it this way, I listen to music for comfort because the sounds the world and its people produce are far too tiring to bear. Even silence is sometimes too overwhelming. Also, there’s hardly anyone here in this cabin and you look sad and I had this overwhelming urge to come and speak to you and tell you it will be alright, you will see.”
This touched her yet left her quite confused. But surely, she thought, surely in this world there must be somebody just like her. If not just like then perhaps a little like. Besides, this strange boy comforted her, even more so then her music did. She decided to stay with him awhile.
“Alright, I know what you mean, I think. Do you want to sit here awhile or are you getting off the train?”
“Oh no no, I have plenty of time to kill. I too boarded the train to nowhere. Did you know that this train to nowhere also goes anywhere? Anytime you want to we can get off and go somewhere nice, and it will be somewhere nice because this train goes anywhere.” He leaned in gently and smiled as he saw her brown eyes light up.
-
“If you could go anywhere right now, where would it be?”
“The beach, I think. Somewhere peaceful and quiet. The endless sea would make me feel insignificant and quite lonely but in a way I would like it. And you know, for some reason the sky is even more beautiful when it is just above vast water. Something about the contrast between sky and sea…” She trailed off softly, like she was speaking to herself.
The boy disappeared right then and an empty space took his place where he had just been and then, just as soon as he disappeared he appeared again and the train screeched haltingly into a stop.
“You got it!” He announced suddenly, beaming proudly.
She looked around her, first confused, then bemused, and then utterly bewildered. Vapour had collected against the window beside her because of the cold. They were so beautifully and perfectly placed, holding onto the windowsill as if for dear life. If you glanced around they would be a complete blur but if you looked at them closely they were almost living beings. Living beings that were so content with just hanging out on the windowsill. It was mind-boggling. But past that, past that there was the smooth sand and the green waters and the blue sky and almost nothing else in her sight.
“How did you do that?!”
“Do what? Come on, there’s a beach to explore!” The boy offered her his hand as they stood up at the same time, but she hesitated and shuffled her feet.
“I hardly know you.”
“I know. But hey, look, this train isn’t going anywhere remember? It is going to be here anytime we want to come back.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Alright, then, but just for a while.”
They got off the train and all of a sudden it wasn’t so cold anymore. Her coat was still on but it was the right temperature, it seemed the right time of the day to be on the beach on a cold day, for the sun was shining straight on them and its rays on her skin made her feel alive. It reminded her of the various songs and images and situations she had spent time imagining herself in. Something like driving with the windows down during a sunrise and feeling the air of all of the world in your face, going to France and buying a baguette, things like that.
His hair waved softly in the wind and he was shivering a bit despite the sunshine, so she held his hand a little tighter. Seagulls sang their songs and made their noises and the wind ruffled some distant trees like a fond father and they walked on, feet sinking into sand and occasionally hitting a seashell. Sometimes they bent down to pick one up to admire its beauty. They had an earpiece in their ear each, connected to her music player, and it was an incredible feeling, she thought. Soft comforting melody seeping into not one but two souls this time. Synchronised beauty, shared minds, souls entwined. For those minutes, at least. For those minutes it was absolute bliss, like nothing could touch them, like those minutes would last forever.
As they walked on the seemingly endless beach they encountered a mother and two children, a boy and a girl, who were standing around looking into the ocean. Out of nowhere the boy started to pick up a stick to hit his sister with, and then outraged shouts from the mother were heard. She grimaced as she thought of how much she disliked children.
“Not a fan, huh?” He must have noticed the look on her face.
“They’re alright, I suppose, to a certain degree. They get annoying.”
“Yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes though I can’t help but wonder if it is because I am insanely jealous of their simplicity. Life was easier when it was all ice cream and candy.”
She nodded.
This boy got her thinking about things. Not terrible things like she always got herself thinking about, but good ones. She liked this feeling, this feeling with him and the beach and the endlessness of everything, and she hadn’t properly liked anything in a long time.
As they walked on they approached an abandoned watch tower that looked like it would be reasonably warm inside, so they decided to enter it. Night was gradually falling and dusk that evening was spectacular – different palettes of colour was painted all over the sky. If God existed, it was as though He had reserved the best sunset for that very evening with a careful but artistic swish-swish of His brush.
They sat themselves down on the ground and slumped against a wall comfortably. Within their reach was a thick and warm duvet, albeit a little dirty.
“Cigarette?” She took one out and pursed it between her lips and held the pack out towards him.
“Yes, please, that would be perfect. Light me up after yours? Big flame, I like big flames.”
She told him about the grey-ash sandcastle, and he told her he understood, and in his blue-grey eyes she could tell he did. He really did.
“I could be safe with you, I don’t know how you are so sure of everything but I want to escape into you. There would be no more black nothingness in me. But people always leave and precious moments always pass and the longer I live the more (people, events, time periods) I miss and the sadder and more tired I become. Nobody’s really here for anybody and I am lonely.” A tear tried its very best to escape the corner of her eye as she became nostalgic and the reasons why she was standing sadly at that train platform all came rushing back like a sudden kick to the head.
“Don’t think about it now. Tonight we have the stars and tonight we have each other and we don’t have to go anywhere and I am not going anywhere.” He squeezed her hand tightly and then pulled the duvet over them so that they were snuggled nice and warm.
They were situated like this a while, star-gazing and considering the futility of life and although both their bodies trembled at the thought of losing each other their minds reprimanded them for being too attached to someone they’d just met.
Slowly she got sleepy, and tired of thinking. Mostly she was tired of being miserable. After all, she had done a whole day’s worth of thinking, and before that day she had had many days’ worth of thinking and she couldn’t possibly do any more.
“I’ll think about it tomorrow”, she murmured to herself, as sleep overcame her like a big and black but warm blanket.
He smiled at the broken sleeping girl in her arms and held her tight, drifting off into sleep himself, wishing there was a way they could fall asleep together and see each other in their dreams so not one second could be lost for tomorrow is a hollow thought and nobody knows what tomorrow might bring.
