Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
--
She glows. In the pitch dark her skin glows, mesmerizing him. It glows white and silver, abruptly interrupted by inky black. She is ghostly; he'd turn on the light, but he prefers ethereal to ill and so does she. When the lights are out, she glows with innocent pallor and beautiful curves and Indian ink, the pen of night carving its way on her skin like calligraphy. When the lights burn bright—too bright—her skin seems lucent and jaundiced, glowing with a different endearment. She looks like liquid gold in the ways she moves and sickly timid in the stains of ink on her yellowed pallor.
She hates leaving him because he is the same, just without the ink stains. Instead he has silvered scars and silvered skin. She counts now, she counts the scars. A large one on his abdomen where her ex knifed him. One over his lip from an incident he doesn't recant that involved a stripper, a backpack filled with drugs, and a few too many wise men. In the light, he's depressing for only the moments that he smiles, when his lips are pulled back and purpled except for a bone white scar. And so they prefer the dark without any promises or pronouncements or chances of a future.
They prefer the dark without the glitter of diamonds and the shimmer of make-up, void of the people pondering why she walks the way she does. She fell down some stairs; she slept funny. The excuses never come to the truth about the 'ink stained skin,' because they'd like to think the ink is not there. They whisper 'ink-stained' instead of 'bruised'; it sounds more poetic. Then again, he's never been one for poetry and she doesn't read much anymore.
He loves the way she moves in the dark; he thinks of liquid silver or tainted mercury. It's far more beautiful than the iron pyrite of the treacherous fluorescent lighting that lets him see everything that ails her. He hates that, hates the fact that someone could stand to hurt her and her carefully-crafted silver—or even the fake gold that everyone else sees.
He hated science, or maybe he loved it. He doesn't remember. But he uses terms so often which meant nothing in the past and mean everything now; trisomy, monosomy, genome, and a slew of other things she wants to make him forget. She knows they can't explain what's happening to her, but he holds elaborate false hope, letting go of his hate for science if it means he won't lose her. He disregards the ink stain on her abdomen that still hasn't faded and the fact that she doesn't go to the doctor; it reminds her that this is all real.
He cries more than she does, and it's strange because she's not strong. She's as weak as a person can be without medical death, and she'll attest that while she's legally alive, she hasn't lived in years. Each breath feels forced and stolen because it probably is.
Her mother knows about them. But not the ink stains. No one must. Mother wonders why Daughter cheats on her 'perfect' husband with a drummer-slash-author-slash-heart-breaking hoodlum. When she asks Daughter if it's love, everything goes quiet, and the only words spoken are goodbyes. The situation isn't love, commitment, or anything resembling, because in truth they hate each other and Mother wouldn't approve.
But sometimes she slips into bed beside him and shushes him, just resting her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat—then sometimes they fall in love. It's never for more than a moment, and it's only been mentioned once. She slapped him, cried, and ran away to take a shower. When she returned, they ignored their feelings and just lay together.
In the depths of Night's shadow, they scream in their sleep—him from the fear of never waking up, and her for the fear of waking to a new day.
Her ink stains are less frequent now. Her husband doesn't hit her—as much—anymore and she visits Harry less and less. She's still silver and gold, but there's no distinction between fake gold and fourteen karats. It doesn't matter; she's still gold in the day and silver in the night. He wonders if there's a fake silver, ponders for a while, and concludes that there probably is. Even so, he likes to think she's real silver and fake gold.
He hasn't seen her in weeks when Mother calls. Daughter is dead. Two days ago, Husband shot her, and as soon as he hears those words his world hurries in a blur and there is nospaceforspace. Father calls too. Finally, Sister rings, and that means he has to accept it. She invites him to the funeral, and for a moment he thinks he'll skip it.
All of it.
Ignore it happened.
Forget her.
Forget them.
Forget everything.
He's falling-falling-falling and there-is-no-space-for-space, and the thoughts run together. He's running-running-running and there-is-no-space-for-space, and the world flies away on the wings of the devil, but he didn't know the devil had wings. He's spinning-spinning-spinning on the hypodermic stings, and he's loving-loving-loving before leaving-leaving-leaving. There-is-no-space-for-space and the universe implodes, and he screams-screams-screams. There-is-no-space-for-space and his life comes tumbling down. He thinks of the walls of Jericho; the walls came a-tumblin' down-down-down, and now there is space for space.
He goes to the grave where the grass has grown over. He likes the black marble granite, but he can't comprehend what's happening and the space is gone. He laughs with insanity at the epitaph and wails, bloodying his fists on her grave mark. And he's falling-falling-falling when Mother grabs his hand, making him stop. These days, human contact is odd and foreign, but her touch grounds him like a hyperactive child.
He calms and settles. She rubs soothing circles on his back as he traces the epitaph of the poem she cherished as a child with his fingers. Nothing Gold Can Stay. He finds it ironic, picturing her in the grave glowing silver-and-gold-and-iron-pyrite. He just cries and traces with Mother's hand on his back. But the calm only lasts for so long and he's drowning in hysteria again. He presses his forehead against the jagged granite; he cries, wails, screams, just wishing for the sting of the hypodermic needle and the drugs in his veins 'cause nothing gold can stay.