Between the Stars and Sky (10 page)

A BLOOD-RED BLANKET wrapped loosely over my shoulders, I stand alone. I press my face against the window so my hot breaths make gray shadows on the glass until I can barely see what’s left of the world outside; my nose barely touches the cold, but has long been numb.

I am broken.

I close my eyes and will myself to cry. I tell myself that when I finally open my eyes again and see beyond the darkness, tears will fall slowly down my face and wash away my old life and give me the means to start a brave new one. I tell myself there is beauty in all these shadows, that somewhere in the distance, when I look hard enough, I can see the sun poking through the dark clouds.

I close my eyes and try to convince myself that it’s okay to smile. She would have wanted me to and that’s the only thing that should matter; the memory of her smile should be enough to give life to mine.

But when I open my eyes and feel my face fall, I know I am still broken, and I am not brave.

I can’t even bring myself to say her name.

I don’t even try.

Other’s do; for days her name is all I’ve heard and all I’ve thought of. People tell me what she would have wanted, what she might be thinking now, and where she might be looking down on the world from. They tell me her secrets as though they knew her. They breathe words and poems and songs that should help me heal and become something more than this broken man sitting alone. They lean close and whisper advice that will help me move on and forget and love someone else.

But I will never forget-

and I still love Sarah.

In that, I want to be broken forever.

Outside, thunder cracks and lightning breaks open the sky in a burst of blinding light and for a moment I think I hear her voice.

And then there is darkness.

Always darkness.

Tonight, as the storm sounds around me, I wonder if I’ll ever find peace in the dark again, or if my life is meant to be lived in these falling shadows.

*   *   *

Before I’m truly awake, I feel my lips curl into a smile, feel hope kiss the place at the deepest corner of my lips and tell me happy secrets.

And then I open my eyes-

and all hope is gone.

This day is even darker than the last.

There’s a knock at the door, but I ignore it because I don’t have any answers.

IF.

If!

If
.

If...

IF.

If-

only.

She didn’t-

meet me.

Die.

Jump.

Make

me

feel

like

that.

If only she didn’t.

*   *   *

I could go on forever.

Or.

I couldn’t.

If she stayed-

I would.

I will.

Still-

I don’t want to.

THE SUN IS KNOCKING at my window, light pounding against my door, my head. The whole world hurts.

A scream.
Pound
. “Jackson!”

I don’t move. I don’t want to talk to him. I’m so mad so sad so angry I don’t even breathe until my lungs begin to burn and I can feel my heart everywhere all at once and I have to. And then-

I have to.

“JACKSON!”

I sit up, air expanding my chest in fever. I can’t get enough of it; I suck the world in like it’s leaving me, like it’s about to be lost forever.

I
have
to breathe.

I don’t think, I just run to the door and rip it open and rip my heart open and say, “Dad, I love you I love you I love you I’m sorry I’m so so sorry.”

I’m a child in his arms, falling against him like I am nothing and he is everything catching me, but I feel the weight of ages on my shoulders as he holds me.

Am I a child?

No.

Am I more?

Maybe.

“It’s okay,” he cries, chokes, laughs. “I’m sorry too. Miles called me. I’m so, so sorry. I’m here now. I’m here, son. I’m here.”

He’s here.

Because I’m here.

And we have each other.

And maybe that’s enough for now.

DAYS DRIFT-

slow and fast.

think one of the most beautiful things in the world is this: The way we pick and choose how we remember our loves who passed. Memories stay, they live and breathe within us, but it is us who decide how to feel, how to go on without them.

This is a new thing for me: Deciding to be happy.

Everything is brighter in the summer; the world thinks it’s about to die at any second and keeps burning and burning and burning to never stop. But everything stops. And as summer sparks to an end, it’s as though the whole world is dying at once. Everything is too bright, too loud, too yellow. And in the sweet reckoning of the desperate desire to hold on hold on keep holding on to something as as summer, we think greatness might just might last forever. Spinning madly on too fast until-

summer is over.

Happiness is like that, I think. Love, too. And as I snap a match, burn it and then let it spark out and smoke into the air, I realize I am not who I was before the summer sunshine turned my world upside down and back again. A part of me is gone, too. The child, the son, the lover. I don’t know which has burned away. Maybe all. But even so, parts of me are there underneath, the same as they were only different.

I say, “
I love you
.”

My mother is in my words.

I whisper, “I miss you.”

Sarah, in the air that holds them.

I think,
I will keep going for you
.

And I’m here in the middle.

Remembering-

how to live.

And remembering a girl who made me smile. Her laugh. Her heartbeats, and the moments when they would skip because of me. The way her hair was the sun. Her eyes the lake, the sky. One summer girl, a girl who lived brighter than the rest. A girl who was so on fire she burned-

out.

SARAH WAS NEVER AN after, but a between just pretending. A before.

Or maybe that was me.

Maybe that happy ending we’re all searching for is impossible to find because nothing lasts forever; everything is just a bitter between, because every beginning has an end.

And she was mine.

Or.

Maybe she was love. A girl who broke me open and mended me the same, who saved me from loneliness even when I didn’t want to be saved. Who helped me realize that life is worth living, loving again. She was. And love, simply, cannot be defined or defied by anything or anyone; it happens when it happens, always for a reason.

Because it’s right.

Because it’s impossible to look away.

Because it’s meant to be.

And maybe Sarah was-

my second love.

My first true.

A girl who brought back my dreams, my world, my life, my hope, my wants and needs and reasons for breathing and falling.

I don’t think it matters-

love is love.

And she was love.

*   *   *

Once, when I was barely old enough to remember, I asked my mother where she’d been in life, where life had taken her. Life, it seemed, had a way of being too big to comprehend, too large to fit into one sentence. But my mother had answers I didn’t, and so I asked.

“Mom? Where have you been?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before me,” I said. “Where were you before me?”

She smiled. “I’ve been everywhere, Jackson. Everywhere you can possibly imagine.”

“You have magic?”

“No,” she laughed. “Well, maybe. Books are magic, right? Like your favorite story, your Atlantis. When we read together, we travel places. Lost worlds, secret islands, strange and beautiful cities in the sky or under the sea. And I read all the time. They help me escape, books. And by escaping the real world I’m able to see it more clearly.”

“I don’t get it.”

She smiled. “You will.”

And I do.

Now.

I understand that we need to escape in order to see our world the way it truly is, that we need to step back so we can step forward. I know words inked on the pages of books may allow us moments of escapism, but their ideas can set us free.

Stories set us free.

And in books or in life, stories are something of a magic all their own. If we find them, we keep them. Always and forever. And in that small miracle, in that small piece of real magic, fantasy and reality are exactly the same.

Sarah-

this summer-

was my story.

SHE JUMPED.

She jumped she jumped she jumped she-

j u m p e d.

And I fell.

When you jump, fall-

when you
let
someone catch you-

we mend each other, endlessly.

I have a secret.

Just one more.

One tiny secret that may save someone.

I will catch you.

I will catch me.

I will have to.

One day, you will too.

You will-

have to.

I HAVE A TRUTH.

Let me tell it.

Let me
scream
it.

Where I was lost, I was found.

They say life is complex, filled with moments defined by belief or faith. They say when we are faced with death, life then becomes simple. We are alive, and then we are not. No betweens. And because of that simplistic notion of dead and gone, living becomes so much clearer when death touches us.

But it doesn’t.

Death doesn’t make things easier.

It’s giving up that’s easy.

Because when the brave are faced with death, all they want to do is live and live and live in the between forever. Breathe one last sip of air. Smile and cry and find the truth to the mystery of why you have to leave before you even started living.

We are all between, always. We are the stars and their stories. And in that small wonder of being between life and death, love and loss, there is an infinite amount of possibility.

“The usual table?” Miles asks me, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “I’m starving.”

I nod. “Yeah, sounds good. I’ll meet you there.”

His eyes question me, but he doesn’t respond. Only shakes his head up and down and up and walks on to our table with Sean. And as Miles and Sean turn to walk away from me, I feel closer to them than ever before. Closer to understanding the love they share. Because as they turn, Miles places his hand on the lower part of Sean’s back. It is a habit, a reflex, a protection. A small moment they have lived in time and time again without knowing. Like breathing or dreaming. Miles and Sean. So in love that love doesn’t have a definition anymore, it just is. It is the words they share, the secrets they keep. The touches they give, the smiles they share. And above all, I am not sure if love is holding them together, or they are holding love.

I miss this-

I want it-

I will have it-

one day.

Sarah was my second love, not my last. And maybe I was her first; the one meant to be between past and future. The one to give her heart wings. I tell myself that I was. Everyday, I tell myself I was something to a girl who was everything.

And I believe I was.

“Are you okay?” a girl asks me. Her smile is kind, soft and sweet, and it makes me think of a girl I used to know. “You look lost.”

“I will be,” I say, and I’m not sure if I’m answering that I am okay or that I am lost. “Just thinking.”

“About anything special?”

I let a second live and die. “About the stars.”

Her smile tells me she knows the stars are more than dots in the sky, yet she begins a quiet story like this: “Well, how about thinking over a cup of coffee?”

I smile. I’m not ready, but I think maybe I have to be. I have to be brave. Strong. Willing to jump when I can’t see the ground; one girl caught me before, showed me how to jump when I can’t see where I’m headed. See the stories the stars tell. Maybe I need to believe it will happen again.

“Coffee sounds nice,” I tell her. “I’m Jackson.”

“Faith,” she says, and, as slow and as quietly as a soft summer storm over a lake, my heart begins to beat again. My heart begins to remember.

Once, my heart stopped beating.

Just for a moment-

for one lost beat that touched infinity-

I lost and found myself.

As I look out the large window next to me, I can still hear the sounds of that summer. I close my eyes, and it’s all so clear. As if I met Sarah Blake just yesterday. Water crashing against the jagged stones grouped together at the Point. Wind blowing through the trees on the last night of the Firelight Festival. Boats honking in the lake. And beyond, the quiet traffic of cars, the only hint that the real world existed.

I open my eyes and golden sunlight hits me, warmth in this cool autumn weather. Inside the restaurant, voices rise and fall and rise again, but still the outside stays the same. It is a painting colored red and yellow and orange and brown, filled with comfort and change. Air so crisp it cuts the clouds in shapes and patterns, and holds leaves in the ever-blowing wind. Weather so filled with smiles it is a small miracle I am not.

If I close my eyes, I can still see her.

If I close my eyes, I can still catch her.

But I cannot stop her from falling.

And maybe that’s the point. Maybe falling in love is like jumping off a cliff on the very last night of a festival that is meant to be the beginning of everything.

This is a love story
, I think, and for a moment my mind rests on the memory of my Mom. Of
poetry
.

Faced with death, the brave become fearful, the sinners become saints. Truths become secrets become hopes become prayers. And, before it has even ended, life becomes death.

But even though dark currents force us to remember ashes on the waves of our pasts, life is not about the before. And even though we die a little more every day, life is not about death.

Life is about now.

The victory of youth lets us love again.

And so I will beat on, heart against the current, against the tide always pulling me down. I will breathe more deeply. I will remember a girl who found my heart. I will fight harder, faster, and stronger for the truths I believe  instead of hoping they exist somewhere, somehow. I will catch myself and whoever lets me close enough to catch them. And I will love until my heart is just as alive in my chest as it is in my dreams. Because maybe, just maybe, living is about loving, and loving is the only thing that keeps us alive. Maybe love is where life ends and begins, and everything in between.

I will live and love.

Here and now.

Between the stars and sky.