Butterfly Keeper // h.s. au

Chapter Thirty Three

Everyone feels pain differently. And at first, maybe I don't feel anything at all. It's bad but I hoped that it would stay this way, that the bubble would never really pop and I would go on with life utterly oblivious to the stages of grief that come with losing someone who's actually still there. It's not like losing someone to death, where you know that you'll never see their exact shade of eyes again except for in picture books and the fading images we hold in our minds. Losing someone to love is different, they're not gone forever, you can still bump into them at a supermarket on an ordinary day when you've long moved past the cringey episodes of crying into your pillow and wondering if the world itself is coming to an end. They can turn an ordinary day into one where you end up replaying all the memories you made together in your head and wondering what exactly went wrong. The shadow of the person you knew stands across from you in isle six, a box of their favorite cereal that you'd always tease them about liking so much held in their hand, and while time stops for that one moment as your eyes meet and you're hit with that firework of a spark in your chest, they'll only incline their head towards you before walking away. You'll wonder, 'Was that the person that I once considered my entire world? The human being that I would have traveled the globe for just to catch one last peek at the endearing tug of their lips that matches the structure of no other?'

    That's the way that ghosts are, they fade in at the hour of peace and scare you into wondering if you've made some mistake. I came to JSU to get away from my ghosts, but yet here I am, watching the eyes of my newest jade-eyed shadow follow me in the way that his living being could never do.

    After I'd driven around back roads surrounded by empty corn fields and forests with their red, orange and yellow ornaments now decorating the earthy floor in faded splotches of brown, I finally decide it's time to go home, back to the confines of my empty dorm. My hands are weak and raw from squeezing and rubbing the skin on my palms against the wheel, and when I grasp the cold metal of my door knob it only soothes that pain for a moment before a bigger ache opens up like hitting a landmine in the center of my chest.

    I had avoided coming back to this empty shell of a room for a reason, and I know I have made a mistake when I step through the door and am left entirely alone with my thoughts and feelings. I drop my bag next to my dresser, the books I never returned tucked inside in a depressing and unsettled way, like they were aching to get back on their shelves and now they'll have to wait another week, month, or year. Maybe I'll never go back into that library, and just stay away forever to avoid the atmosphere and adjoined memories.

    I pace back and forth, stretching my fingers out and then curling them back into the warmth of my stinging palms. The carpet makes a swishing sound beneath my boots, the odd projection of light from the sky today casting a triangular set of glowing marks onto the tan flooring. I twist the ring on my thumb round and round like the swirl of clothes in a washing machine. The blue-green gems might even resemble the swish of bathroom towels being swayed in the suds of cold water.

    And then I stop in the middle of the light slots on my floor, one of them painting itself onto my face. I hold my hand out before me, fingers stretched apart from each other and the silver band on my thumb glinting just slightly. My eyes fall to my nail beds, and as I bring them closer to my face I trail my eyes along the smooth skin around my nails. There is isn't a scratch of red, bloodied, skin torn away from my beds on any of the fingers, and it's the first time that I've seen my hands look this way since before high school. My fingers are healed, free of the hangnails that I'd peel till they got so deep I could see pink skin hiding underneath like taking the peel off of a banana, and would wince every time I would go to bring my hands under soap and warm water.