In Memory

Image from ~YaraKlaproos at deviantart. 

It was a scorching summer day.

She was sitting underneath the large oak tree in her favourite park located in the out fringes of town, a pretty picture of insouciance, twirling a freshly picked daisy between her thumb and forefinger like she had not a care in the world. Nature was ringed in a beautiful sunlit halo around her, but her eyes were unfocused, vacant and unseeing. She was remembering; voices carried to her by an unfelt wind.

Time can never mend the careless whispers of a good friend.


Does life really flash before one’s eyes before death? She had finished picking all the petals off the flower, and now it hung, bare and limp in her fingers. She had heard tales of the white tunnel, the rushing sound one hears as one nears the final threshold. Would there be a veil? If there is, she imagined it would be white, translucent and beckoning.

To the heart and mind, ignorance is kind.

He had always described her as a precariously innocent soul. Like a white greenhouse rose, constantly on the verge of contamination by pests, whose pure petals are easily stained by time. She did not understand what he meant at the time; how could she? She was simple but beautiful, always adored in spite of her childish, petulant ways. She proved him wrong though. She chose to go over, no longer balanced on the edge but freely falling.

I’m never going to dance again. Guilty feet have got no rhythm.

They met at a club, and it was the first and only time they danced. She had gotten in with a fake ID, courtesy of her friends. All her friends were older, more learned than she was. She wanted to be like them, sharing in all the unclean jokes, taking part in the lurid public washroom stories. He had seen her crashing out of a narrow stall with a casual partner prior to their fatal dance. Her makeup was smudged, her dress in artful disarray, but even then she had managed a seeming of innocence, however spoilt. Maybe it was her blank expression, her big doe eyes that he found alluring. He was fool enough to swallow her stories, or had he known the whole time? This was a revelation to her and she did not like where her thoughts were leading. Why would he put up with her and help keep up her delusions?

So I’m never going to dance again, the way I danced with you.

She had done it on the night of his birthday, setting him up with another transparent lie, another unaccountable stain on the bed sheets that had not been made by them together under the cover of night. It took almost no effort to lure the other boys to her room to add to her set, making it seem like there was something going on. There never was anything going on—at least nothing worth mentioning. She enjoyed toying with him and seeing him suffer—it gave her a high she could not explain. She was not normally a sadist, but she hated being put on a false pedestal, being told she was better than all that. The higher up she was raised, the further she would have to fall. Was it not a rule of gravity that what goes up must fall when nothing more substantial than air is present? And his arms were never strong enough for the two of them, not much better than empty air. Now would not it be glorious if she could play the game by her own rules, flaming away instead of subject to the indignity of being caught at unawares. She was not his handhold, not his keeper, and his depression meant nothing to her.

(Now that you're gone) What I did was so wrong; so wrong that you had to leave me alone.

After all she had done, he did not even scream. Not a word was uttered, not even a single pointless text message was left flashing on her phone. He left her well enough alone. Was this what she had wanted, the ability to rejoice and enjoy the hot summer day without him?

And the cold nights...she was banished from them, no longer able to claim that she can dance with rhythm in the darkness.