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CHAPTER ONE; dead stars. ( ZAFIRA )
MAY , 2021
A DEEP SADNESS COAXES to life within my gut. Like a fire, it starts out gradual and slow. A spark in a puddle of gasoline, so small in the grand scheme of things that you could never imagine any harm coming from it. Yet when they make content, chaos erupts. Red, orange and yellow rise out of murkiness in the same way God pulled mountains from flat land. It towers over everything in its vicinity and it burns. It burns in the way a thousand sparks does, blinds you like you're looking straight at the sun. No matter how much you beg for mercy, for relief, it'll never come. It'll just keep blazing until it grows, until it swallows you whole. Then you are nothing but a moe-hill of ash, a dusting of your remains.
They say sadness is blue. It's dark, deep waters of despair. They say sadness is liquid smooth, like the aftermath of a large wave, when the world comes to a silent standstill as you gaze at the sky through a tinted lens. Sadness is meant to drown you. It's meant to leave you anchored at the bottom of the ocean, shackled to the sea bed, sobbing and urgent for air. Sadness is supposed to be that visceral feeling that the air you so desperately need will never come. That you will never be happy again, that you'll spend the rest of eternity at the bottom of the ocean, because that's the card you've been dealt with.
I disagree. Sadness isn't blue. Sadness is red. Sadness isn't water, it's fire. Sadness is the itching at the bottom of your throat, the sickly feeling of smoke stuck in your lungs. It's a dry mouth and eyes so exhausted that tears simply simmer off of your face. Sadness isn't a sinking spiral into despair, it's a rapid explosion of collateral matter. Like the death of a star or a match's final breath, it's the ending of something big. So big that once it's over, there's nothing left but a vast realization that nothing will ever be okay again.
That is the true meaning of sadness. You don't realize how awful it truly is until you live in it.
Fourteen days. That's how long I've been living in it.
Here I sit, in the empty lot behind one of Orlando's local gas station, my father's eulogy in my hands. I'm in the backseat of his pickup truck — the one he left for me — and I don't know what to do with myself.
It's well past midnight and the moon hangs proudly from the sky. Its light casts onto the black color of his car, reflecting a soft glow onto my face. Cars drive around, getting gas or stopping by the corner store. All of that seems mindless and the noise goes through one ear and out the other. There's a chill to the night air and it nips my bare skin.
I should've brought a jacket, some part of me thinks. However, the other part of me likes how it keeps me in check, keeps me level.
