Chasing the Sun

N i n e t e e n : Ring of Fire

I wouldn't willingly tell another soul.

I'd much rather have my grief eat me inside out first.

Some pain deserved to be swallowed, buried, and destroyed.

And if I can swallow and bury and destroy funerals and expectations and family then I can surely forget the pain of heartbreak.

It's just another thing that happens to me. It's just another thing that shouldn't have happened.

I want to picture anything else but like lightening her eyes flash behind my closed eyelids.

So with pain too heavy for any body to carry, I unlatch locks and take the steps two at a time.

My eyes find the sky and I find the energy to breathe.

It's twilight, the time between dreams and nightmares, the time between blurred perception and unthinkable mistakes.

I'm just in time to save the last of me.

The wind is rustling, it's pulling and pushing me, to where? I don't know but I stick my legs through the rusting railing and take in the view from the roof of my apartment building.

Looking down I watch my feet dangle and can't decide if I want to fly or jump, I guess I just want to feel anything but the ghost of her fingers against my bruised skin.

Inhaling, I try my best to ignore the way air struggles to my lungs, it's just a few minutes till it a new day with new hope.

It's just a few minutes till I can see the sun.

The same sun that rises in New York and sets in Detroit.

-

I don't understand.

Nothing in the universe has changed but somehow this isn't what I need it to be.

But how?  It is what it has always been.

Golden rays are stretched across the pastel blue of the morning sky, bathing in its quietness before shedding all signs of humility, transforming into a blinding light that forces me to look away.

I wish I didn't have to look away.

And I wish the sun didn't just feel like a burning ring of fire.

Glancing down, I make the mistake of checking my phone, the dimly lit screen telling me what I already know.

no missed calls, no new messages.

Swallowing a wave of nausea I know it isn't healthy to feel this sad and it can't be normal to try and find happiness in a spark of energy against a blue sky.

A heart so heavy can only invite ghosts in.

Ghosts that don't leave once they're remembered.

No.

It was safer to be angry, angry at Alice and angry at myself for not knowing better.

It can be a contest, who can I hate more? Myself or the girl that ruined the sun?

-

When the sun settled in its place against the sky and the streets began to be filled with the living and the purposeful, I took my cue and returned to my apartment.

I had all plans to stay inside, burn and melt into my own rage but being surrounded by books and notes and head scarfs that I couldn't bring myself to touch was a mockery I couldn't willingly endure.

So like an old movie, stuck on repeat, I know the scene too well, I'm weaselling through the alley and walking through the coffee shop's back door.