The night was young and sultry fulfilling the promise of standing true to its name. The world went on in its usual rhythm, cars lighting the roads like little supernatural sparkles. People walked about lost to the consistency of their uneventful lives. Amidst the silky chaotic night, the sky held the figure of a lonesome girl in its friendly embrace. Lying on her back on the rooftop of her house, Lyra passively took in the faint gleam of stars overhead. Contrast to the night's young display was Lyra's tired soul that felt as old as a hag of the medieval century, leading a solitary life. This night, Lyra found herself weighed down by the burdens of all that was around her. Breath after breath taken by her, to calm down and yet she found not a single trace of peace pass by her lonesome figure.
She could not name one particular thing to deem it responsible for the desolation of her current self. It was like a slow piling of passive worries, that overtime from being pushed to the back of her mind, had finally flown past the wall of her defense to hit her face-first with a tremendous force of intentional disaster. Try as she may, but the tissue consisting of muscles and countless cellular entities pumping life and blood to her was a tissue nonetheless. And like tissues crumple and wrinkle in an instant under a heavy flow of water, Lyra's heart was also overtaken by the tsunami of her unfulfilled life. It came as no surprise when she found a weight pushing down on her chest forcing her to lie on her back and take in the passivity of the stars. It was the only thing she could do to ground herself in the moment. It was the only thing that could keep her from dissociating from her conscious identity.
Even the twinkly sparkles seemed scarce and unwanted in the vast blanket of darkness. The abundance of their twinkle seemed to be receding day by day much like Lyra's grip on reality and peace. It was the constant fights around her. It was the widening crack she saw in her family, like an earthquake splitting the ground, with her doing nothing but letting it swallow her whole; attempts at preventing it futile as garbage. It was the slow drifting apart from her best friend of years to the unforgiving nature of changing times. It was the uncertainty of a secure future hanging over her like a guillotine ready to impale her neck off her body any instant. It was the tantalizing hope of a better tomorrow that seemed more and more translucent by each passing day. Every worry, every uncertainty swallowed her whole and soon enough she found herself drowning with a heavy weight attached to her ankles.
The silence of the night was so profound that she found herself going deaf to the intensity of its screeching sound.
In those moments of unhappiness, the thought of a particular figure struck her like a brick out of open air. It smashed into her senses making her see a little light in the darkness of the abysmal river she was drowning in.
If only you were here.
If only you could hold me.
If only...
Lyra raised her right arm to trace the pattern of the few stars that still hung over the vastly empty sky, not letting the world be bereft of their shine just yet.
What month must it be?
What constellation would the stars be patterning in?
Was his there in the sky yet?
Am I too blind to see it?
Or has it also disappeared like him? Choosing not to grace me with its sight anymore?
A sigh escaped her mouth permeating the still air of her surroundings. A sigh which held the unspoken words of her desires, the non-worded wish of her dreams.
In the tranquility of the moment, another hand graced her vision. An arm she was all too familiar with. The fingers that had entwined and enclosed hers in their safety countless number of times. The hands that she loved the most to get the feel of.
"Hmm... the stars are slowly growing dim by the days." Even his speaking voice carried an echo of melody to it.
Or maybe it's just a defect of my ears.
"I'm surprised they haven't receded at all just yet." Lyra voiced her own observation.
"True, we should indeed salvage the little bit of all that's left." Lyra was unsure if it was a statement about the stars, or a mockery of her disgratitude at not salvaging the things she had left.
She could feel his head near hers. His hair tickled the outline of her ear and his comforting warmth radiated off him in waves to enclose her in its safety. He was wearing the same yellow bomber jacket that she loved so much on him. Their heads touched each other, their positions mirroring while their feet faced the opposite directions.
Lyra turned her head to look at his face. The scar adorning his left cheek greeted her sight and she felt an itch in her hand to run her fingers over it. The scar that she so admired; one of the many peculiar little details of his that she would often find herself musing over. She adored those imperfections with a manic passion.
Under the dimly lit blanket lay two youths lost in their own contemplations with the boy admiring little of what was left of the twinkling lights, and the girl admiring the boy beside her. To her, he was also a star on earth, because like those in the sky, he was also unique and scarce and perhaps if he dimmed there would be no other in his succession.
She found her arm tiring out after a few minutes of hanging in the air. Before Lyra could lower it to her side, his cool slightly larger palm engulfed her warm one entwining her fingers in their familiar safety. Lowering the glued hands to his eyes, the boy admired their conjoined palms with the curiosity of a child. His thumb traced butterfly patterns over her pulse, eyes latched in extreme possessiveness over the sensation of her rhythmic throbbing veins.
"Lyra?"
"Hmm?"
"What's wrong? What's weighing you down? Won't you tell me?" His gentle voice was like the cooing a mother does to her newborn and involuntarily the vulnerable tissue inside her chest found itself softening and breaking a little more at that tone.
The lilt in his voice worked like a trigger to the mist in her mind. She felt clouds looming over the dreary sky of her heart, water threatening to let loose from the grey condensations.
Lyra attempted to tug her wrist back to herself, his continuous patterns of thumb tracing making it harder for her to breathe, to remain calm, to keep the latch locked on the gates of her floodworks.
"Lili..." A slight inflection in those two syllables and a gentle tug from his side to keep her wrist pinned to his eyes.
That was all it took to clear the mist over her raging heart. Clouds let loose and little droplets drizzled on the desolate land of her scratched organ. Drops adorned her eyelashes like dewy pearls on the blades of grass in a rainy monsoon day.
The drizzle was light and momentary, not yet turning into a downpour. The drops clung to her lashes as an adornment for the time being waiting for the right moment to slide down the tresses of her cheeks and take away her pain with them.
"Lili... please say something."
There it was... that name again: the one thing that blossomed a smile on her face simultaneously sending a crack to her heart.
Yes. She was his Lily. As was he, her White Rose.
The association had come to her naturally. She could not describe the reason why she chose that specific color and that specific flower. It was just his face and his whole self that reminded her of the fragility and tranquility of a white rose. She often wished she could have chosen a more lively color, something signifying life and blood like red, and not eerie and solitary like white. Perhaps her unconscious self could have premonitions into the future. Perhaps this was why she had so naturally associated him to white... to light... to eeriness... to heaven... to death.
"But what would it change if I tell you anything? Would it give me relief? Would it give me meaning? A reason to hold on? A solution to all my worries?"
"Would it give me my friend back? Would it give me my parents back? Would it give me a shoulder to lean on? To finally rest my head, for me to escape to my dreamland? What will it do?"
He sat up on his elbow letting their conjoined hands rest between them. Finally moving sideways, he looked into her eyes with a fierceness. Even in the dark his big innocent eyes held a sparkle. He had always been like that, holding a twinkle in his eyes that could make real stars envy their brightness.
"It would give you me Li! I'll be your shoulder. I'll be your friend, you can come with me. We can escape to our dreamland then." His voice was enthusiastic. Hope clung to his inflections like a child believing in the security of a future that held no harm.
But Lyra knew better.
She knew. She had always known.
So, she slipped her hand out of his possessive grasp and let it lay limp on her stomach. He was too beautiful a dream, too addictive a hallucination, too eerie a ghost of her vivid memories.
"It would do nothing... It won't bring you back."
The dew on her eyes slowly turned into thicker drops gathering over the surface of her irises
"But I haven't even gone anywhere! Why would I be back?"
No sniffle escaped her but the giant lump lodged in her throat and the few stray tears escaping gave it all away about the state of her heart.
"Li? Why are you crying? Please don't cry!" The panic in his voice only catalyzed the fury of clouds looming over her heart.
"You promised me didn't you? You broke it... what's the point of false hope now, Jeon? Go away... please."
Against her screaming desperation, her sanity knew it was the better judgment. As much as she hated voicing it out, as much as she hated saying his name out of fear of its nightmarish materialization, she couldn't stop it. She had to do it, acknowledge it so it would not break her further.
"But Lyra... I am here now aren't I?" His voice lowered to a delighted whisper; a whisper holding all the reassurances of the world and the things beyond.
His lips found her tear clad cheek sinking their pillowy softness into her skin. His touch was the flutter of a butterfly wing, the tickle of a lost dandelion. The sensitivity of his touch rivalled the rawness of her cold face. The salty tears that had managed to escape from her eyes now clung to his lips. Such profound action sent ripples of shock through her spine and mounds of goosebumps over her body.
"I'll always be here, Li."
A kiss on her nose wetting it slightly with the moistness of tears on his lips
"Please... just let me be with you...?"
Another kiss sinking into the other cheek, the tears there clinging to his cold pink petals.
"But are you there, Jeon?" She closed her eyes failing to restrict her floodgates.
Are you...?
The both of them had sat up by now facing each other. His eyes mirrored the desperation she felt in her heart. The innocence and ignorance broke her worse than what weighed down her present. His arms reached out to hold her and his bomber jacket bright yellow in its color was slowly starting to resemble the flame scorching her skin and bones and heart and soul.
"Lyra..." It was his last desperate plea.
"Jeon..." It was her last call to his name.
That was it; for the misty drops adorning her lashes like dew had finally found their free reign to escape down the sides of her face in a continuous fall. From the depressed fissures under her eyes to the unnoticeable coarse edges of her face and down and down, to her neck onto her chest, blooming and blooming like dead lilies and white roses.
Only this time the tears weren't blooming into sparkly flowers to revive her heart like the revival scene from Tangled. Those tears were to be used as the salty water to layer the newly dug grave where her broken heart lay with the body and memory of the one she had held the dearest in her life.
It was a loss so tantamount that even the tricky denial of her mind could not let her forget the reality of it for some brief moments. She knew any exchange, any loving glance, any ghost touch was just that... a ghost, a hallucination.
An apparition...
Not real.
And definitely not there anymore.
In front of her very eyes, clouded and blurred with the wetness of her heartbreak, she yet again saw him disappearing into soft white particles the color of a white rose - its petals crumbling dissolving to the ground after its death.
And she? She could do nothing but watch and break...
Over and over and over...
Like glass cutting its sharp edges lodged deep into her skin almost becoming a second part of it.
Her hand reached out in a futile attempt to stop it all. To catch a hold of his once warm skin that only seemed to greet her with coldness in her dreams, to entwine her fingers, to pull him close and breathe him in one last time... to properly say goodbye.
Alas the cruelty of time and tide.
Time that shows no mercy and tide, that does not quench the thirsty.
She watched his apparition break apart like her heart and she wailed and wailed until sniffles could be the only sounds her body could muster to expel her agony.
And just like that, the young night witnessed yet another one of the girl's breakdowns as her heart took on all the wrinkles of the tragedies of her past and present. It could do nothing but offer its silence to be filled with the sound of her sniffles as she lay rolled up on the floor... like crumpled paper... like a torn tissue ball.
A/N: I still cannot believe I wrote this. It seems almost foreign yet very dear to my heart. It's about time I had to let it out of my drafts. I hope it's loved and cherished.