White Winged
by Maddi
When you find the most beautiful thing,
nothing will ever be better. But then you don't know that at the
time. There are things I can only see looking back; that tell me now
what I wish I knew then. That I felt him before I even walked out the
door; I didn't know it was him then but now I am almost certain it
was. Stepping out of the smoke and sweat clogged air into the
bracing, crisp night. The darkness seemed friendlier somehow, like a
warm welcome. Welcomed to the darkness of the night I turned and saw
my new home. Weakly veiled as prey I assumed the hunt of the predator
I am. I did not know he was the best; at the time he was simply one
of the better.
I took him and fed off of him and tasted the
best; and I was the best because he was there. I took advantage of
his willingness and trespassed over untouched beauty. That night, as
he lay beside me, I dreamed of birds. Something white colored;
pigeons or doves. They were flying because that's what birds do. I
got the feeling that the birds enjoyed flying; that they must get
some type of pleasure from it. But these birds in my dream were
ignorant. I knew they didn't know just what an amazing thing they
could do, and they had no idea how many humans wished they could do
what they took for granted.
I reached up into the sky and
touched their feathers. They were very soft. I pulled their feathered
bodies close to me and curled up around them feeling the impossibly
soft feathers warming my bare skin. About then I started to feel my
head; it was not happy with me and demonstrated this by giving me
sharp shots of pain with every pulse of blood. Squeezing the soft
bird in my arms I found that nature could not produce a pigeon of the
size I was currently cuddling and I opened my eyes to face the sky.
At least, I thought it was the sky. He had very blue eyes in the
morning and they could be mistaken easily for the sky by anybody
whose head hated them as much as mine did me at that moment.
Everything that happened after that I don't want to talk
about. Or think about. Or acknowledge at all. Let's just skip ahead
awhile to this really nice beach in Italy, because that's when things
got good again. He was in the water getting very red and I was
sitting under a tree near the top of the beach getting not nearly as
red as he. I just thought he'd enjoy the beach because it was a
really nice one. One of the most beautiful I'd ever seen. Cloudless
blue skies; shiny golden sand with amazingly loud waves constantly
bombarding it with their endless, passionate roar.
The
interesting part came after we left the beach and were in bed
together around midnight. We were on our stomachs, both our backs
smothered in aloe balm to cool the captured heat in our skin. He was
sleeping lightly, more comfortable on his stomach then I, it being
his preferred sleeping position.
I was not so lucky and
wiggled my way around the bed letting my mind drift to unimportant
things. I needed to get my nails clipped, they had grown far too long
and had more then once gotten caught on the loose fabric of the bed
sheets. Stevie Nicks sure sang some good songs. One of them had been
stuck in my head while sitting on the beach today. We had been
listening to it in the car while driving there. I didn't know which
album the song had been on. Maybe he knew? I had looked down at him
from my place under the tree and couldn't find him anywhere in the
deserted landscape. Half a second of panic later I relaxed as his
body jumped up in sync with a particularly bracing wave. Arms spread
above his head with a smile as wide as the whole beach he rode the
wave to shore. I noticed his hair was the same color as the sun
spangled sand.
He gave a short snort loud enough to rouse me
from my wondering thoughts. I realized I was very thirsty and gently
moved out of the bed and padded into the kitchen to retrieve a bottle
from the fridge. I was guzzling it down in front of the open fridge
when a soft shuffle of footsteps brought him into the light of the
fridge door. When he's tired he walks in this little waddle, like a
brain damaged duck. Lightly swaying, always just about to bump in to
something and appearing to move forward with nothing more than pure
luck. Still he made it all the way to stand beside me and take the
now half empty bottle from my hand and bring it to his own lips to
finish it off.
Right then I realized. This was it. He was it.
It wouldn't get any better than this; him. This man was the most
beautiful thing I had ever encountered or ever would. This man with
his eyes too close together to be truly handsome. This man with sleep
scrunching his brow making him look about 12. This man who had just
stolen my bottle of Mountain Valley Spring Water. I don't know if I
showed any outward symptoms of my epiphany. He didn't react; he just
put the almost empty bottle back in the fridge even though he knows
how much I hate him doing that. I was standing right in front of him;
he pulled the door closed, looked up at me for a second, then took my
hand loosely and pulled me back to bed.
After that I felt a
little shaky but I did fall asleep. In the morning the feeling was
gone. That shook me; it had been so strong last night, so absolute. I
could barely stand it. But then that made sense. I could never stand
to feel something that powerful every minute of everyday. It had
probably gone where all my other strong emotions go. I just seemed to
file them away to avoid them affecting my decisions too deeply.
Taking note of them then pushing them aside. It almost shocked me
that it had become instinct to do that with anything I might be
feeling. Even if it was something I wanted to examine more closely.
It saddened me that my defenses had done away with one of the
greatest emotions I had ever felt. I felt angry with myself and
frustrated that I had so little control over my own mind. This was
the first time I had ever truly looked at this and I thought about
all the times that people have said things like 'Brian has no
emotion' and 'Do you feel nothing?' It was all starting to make a
creepy kind of sense. Now that I knew what was different about me the
next question was what was I going to do about it? To undo a lifetime
of defenses would take another lifetime; it would take me years to
even understand it. Was it worth it?
Spreading out on the bed
I reached across for him. Hitting empty air, I looked across to find
his sleeping place empty, smelling slightly of the aloe balm. He must
have rolled over at some time in the night. Or maybe I had? The sound
of clanking crockery was drowned as he started singing rather badly.
Damn morning person. Watching him through the doorway moving around
making breakfast, I felt a soft glow at his perfection. It was a
corner of a shadow of what I had felt last night. I could remember
the emotion and that gave me hope.
It would be worth it to
once again 'know' that he was it. Because even though I no longer
'knew', I could remember 'knowing' and that memory was still so
strong that my mind was made up. I would try and then succeed, for
there was no other choice when I decided to do something. Though I
feared this would be my greatest challenge; to fix my own fucked up
mind. I would find a way to let myself know that he was the most
beautiful thing; that nothing would ever be better. Until then I had
the memory, I would not let myself forget.
End
The
Song: Stevie Nicks - Edge of Seventeen
