Broken and Burning Things
"You have to protect yourself from sadness. sadness is very close to hate. Let me tell you this. This is the thing I learned. If you take in someone else's poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you."-Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
I.
This is a broken bone, a fracture: the creak of old wood straining against rivets and rusted steel, encrusted with barnacles and stained with salt water. Hands, calloused and worn, pulling on ropes, and the groan of the ship listing as a sail unfurls against the wind.
"An old ship." You say quietly, because no one has ever asked you to put it into words before, and you haven't time or energy to say more, to explain every detail, rich and unimaginably vivid, tucked and folded into every sound.
She doesn't ask for more.
II.
This is what you see: the flames licking at her skin, curling around her hair, and dancing across the planes of her face, the soft orange glow of fire encircling her eyes like the stroke of an artist's hand, paint to skin, flesh to fire. She burns, like the sun, and it's beauty and horror mingled together, spilling gold as far as you can see.
"A world on fire." You say, but its more, so much more, and maybe one day you'll have the time to explain, and the words to say it.
But not now.
III.
"What does a broken heart sound like?" Claire says, so softly a normal person couldn't hear.
But you're not normal, and you hear every word, every note of sadness and resignation in her voice, the tiny hemorrhaging within the words, a slow but fatal bleed.
She loves you, you know, more than she should, but she can't stay, can't watch, and you understand. But she wants an answer, and this time she's waiting for one, with the patience that tells you that she'd listen to every word, every explanation of the sound.
But you don't hear anything but silence.