I woke to the sound of gentle summer rain. The sun threw orange paint at the clouds and swirled the area around it into a gradient of the stuff mixed with a beautiful blue. The sky seemed bigger than usual. I looked down at the table. On it sat a newspaper that lay flat and square with the edge of the dark oak. My best tie and bouquet of roses lay wilting on the far corner, unrefrigerated and bruised from an impact with leather upholstery. My shirt was still damp with lukewarm tears, and my face had a red oval of lipstick just on the top of my cheek bone.
She didn’t see those things, just the lipstick and the way I sat stoic and frozen with shock, my hands obsessively rubbing each other, pivoting with the elbows that propped themselves on the knees, which connected to feet that pointed inward, towards each other, scared of the new world they would be walking, alone. She saw the eyes that kept blinking, trying desperately to board themselves up before the hurricane. She must have heard the thoughts like a fire suppression system, trying to be caring, but egging on the pain. She knew she would make it sting even worse when she kissed me, but she knew no other way to make me feel better. It wasn’t her fault.
I looked out into the rising mist. It was broken up by a large white truck that sat at a stop sign, waiting for nothing to pass. I looked then at the wall clock, even though I knew it stopped at 4 pm three months before. I was trying to quantify the time I could not perceive; I felt like a person inside a man, nothing but a jar which housed distilled grief, sitting somewhere tucked inside a cupboard, destined to be forgotten and thrown away after a season or two. My heart dropped into an abyss, and thus, I was alone again, crouched in a corner, scared, but I did not blame her for it. I loved her without inhibition and without care for consequence. I know I need to fall in order to one day soar.
Luke Foster is an eleventh grader in music.