There aren’t many times in my life I’ve felt alright, like the world was going my way. My brain doesn’t work to see the light shining through the white, broken blinds. It notices the broken-ness and obsesses over it. Until now, I didn’t know what it meant to be truly broken.
I lost the person who saw me. Every single flaw, every single strength. The weird, the bad, and the beautiful. It was Saturday morning and his voice was mellow, almost midwestern. He called me ma’am.
“Ma’am, I’m sorry, she’s not.”
My voice remained earily calm, leaning on that word-- “Ma’am.” Like I had authority. Like I was put together. But it didn’t sound like my voice. The nice, almost midwestern detective answered that she was. She was dead.
Every part of me started shaking. And then came the wailing.
I knew people could make that sound. I had a word for it--keening. The sound came out of me and I didn’t recognize it as my own. It was alive all by itself. I kept picturing the scene in Pocahontas where she was standing on the cliff’s edge, surrounded by this wind, full of feathers and leaves and dust. The keening surrounded me, but it wasn’t me. I was at the cliff’s edge.
I haven’t yet stepped back.
She’s gone now and I have to live without her. Without the me that lived because of her. There was another me once, before AR happened. That other me has made uncomfortable steps forward, but doesn’t fit anymore, like an old jacket. Familiar but outgrown.
I don’t know who I am now. This version, without her, is incomplete.
AR was glitter and sass, the sharp edge of a blade and a warm blanket. She lived and was afraid to live. She was never loved the way she should have been, except by me. She never had children. She never traveled to other countries. She never loved herself.
Soulmates aren’t always our romantic partners. Sometimes they are shy, pink-haired girls with a pocket knife and an attitude.
Sometimes, we are left behind.
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
