The flame is lit, and the candle burns a bright yellow. This is to be the last entry in this chapter of my life. There is nothing else left for me to say; but to end it this way. I rip a page from the journal. The torn edges jag along, scattering the script so it becomes unreadable. Just like my life, I muse. Fuck him, goddamnit. Stupid sonbitch. Always treating me like a child. Who was he to talk?
Short black hair and tired grey-blue eyes are all I can remember of him now. Inhale deep, exhale and ritually place the paper over the flame, cleansing me of his torment. I want to be free, to begin anew. Where to begin? When will it all end?
The flame catches the torn edge, shrivelturns releasing the pains in my chest from real to memories later locked away. So many memories tied to him. The ring, the love, moving away from it all to escape. Always a new beginning, never a happy ending. Relationships never end well, some do; but were they really a relationship to begin with?
Fake. Probably not.
Yellow and red consume the paper, the beginning of the end. Anger and confusion, are all that’s left of three years devotion. Time to recast the wheel of fate and see where it leads me, I think. The paper slowly shrivels into a fetal position like a baby sleeping. Black charred scars are all that’s left of the feelings awaiting to be replaced by someone, something new, exciting– always better.
But will there be another? Do you really want to go through this again? Perhaps it’s better to end it here. Spill the seeds of life and snuff the flame. Darkness is the only escape from the madness living provides.
It all begins in another time, another place. He needed me just as much as I him. It started during the season of growth and knowledge. In the distance the schoolbell rings, and the ants race in. Classrooms fill the mind with trivial musings. Life provides the real learning: harsh, cold and painful experience. I in a degree of the senses, he in a program of the logical. Opposites attract they say, and like moths to the same flame were we.
Flames dance across the mirror, reflecting the daemon destroying the dreams of the heart. Cast in shadows, my chestnut hair hangs in my face. Dark skin darkens further beneath the brown depths of my eyes. Razorblade slashes the wrists, marks of a true artist, metalglint from the light reflecting the pain within. I tear another page from the journal as a melancholy satisfaction flows over me.
Melpomene is the artist’s mark, tragedy tortured torment. Blood and script the tools of my creation. And from out of this marriage what comes? Only the thought of When will I ever be whole? Fuck living the two lives of a madman. I want to be one, to have the normal life of others. But even that is stretching it too far, I suppose.
The flame dances in the dark of the room, mimicking the motions of a person insanity lost. Mimicking me. Depression and mania are the fuel that feeds my life. Extremities are my playground. From which life has sealed my fate. To take them away from me would water the flame that builds inside this stone cold heart. Shatter the desire, and spew me into a thousand tiny fragments of a puzzle.
This will be the end. I repeat this over and over like a mantra, half expecting to see it true. The smell of burning paper hangs thick, adding incense to ritual. But, I’m human and we lie. I know that one day I will rebound. Pick up the scattered pieces of the jigsaw puzzle and find someone new to provide the motif. The next masterpiece in creation.
Silently I breathe the flame out and look outside. A new beginning unfolds out as the clear black sky above, turns to grey.
I will not cry anymore. The rain, it cries enough.