It was another blank page, one in hundreds but Deacon hoped it would be the very last one. "Write it down", they said. "Write it in a letter and you will see what it all means."
He started the letter in a yellow legal pad, as he did every single time. It felt right and yet it must have been a mistake since they never ended in the format he intended. Or maybe he wasn't trying very hard. He had come to learn that in life the right thing was the most effortless one and the wrong thing wasn't very far behind. The key was to separate the two, which was a lesson learned after the final fall.
Scribble me a line
Cold hands back in time
They never meant to start me up
But I crashed and I rolled on
Recently he had started from the very beginning, just to tie it all together. The reasons were clear in his mind, no one needed to point out the why's and the how's. His torment was public knowledge and the humiliation would have been enough to end him, had the pain not always been stronger and too complex to deal with. Sometimes he hoped other people's issues would shine as brightly as his when they went about their day. But it was only a second that he allowed himself to imagine it would make the smallest difference. Still, he wrote it down because he knew it now and even if most of them didn't believe it, at least the written words were a proof of some kind, to him if no one else. The sun glimmered orange behind the thick curtains as he kept writing, not caring if he could hardly see the paper. The letters turned into songs all the same and maybe it was the pad, maybe it was the chaos of his younger years when he had only learned to feel through guitar strings, or maybe it was the fact it was still about Rayna.
Tell me about that line
Was it merely a lifeline?
I could have stopped for all I know
But it had caught me long before
His excuses had ended when she got that look in her eyes, the final warning mixed with a heart break that he had given her somewhere along the lines. It had just happened and it was one of those easy things, he realized to his horror. He had stumbled on the last obstacle before the finish line and there was no excuse. No words could have hurt him more than her silence, their mutual realization that this was it. When he had given her the ring back, it almost felt like an act of violence of some kind, but it was never going to happen in any other way. He exhaled and briefly covered his mouth with his free hand, as if hoping he could push the air back inside along with the most painful memories.
Long before you
I was on the road through fields of gloom
Stains you wipe clean, but cracks they remain
And so I turned the wheel, and blind I came
Long after you
The smoke cleared but the fire raged on
That the years never could kill
It was here, it was still
It was a time he could barely remember, apart from the few glimpses of bruises, shattered glass and his mother's eyes that jittered even when her body had learned not to. Most of his life seemed to be brief moments of happiness or grief spread randomly in endless dark space and he had stopped trying to tell the others to quit looking for clues. He would sit down and watch from the outside as time and people passed him by. Sometimes Rayna would join them and it terrified him, but he knew he couldn't run after her, brush her hand and see if her eyes would avert from whoever she was with. He had no right and she had no reason and yet he knew she would stand still for him. The fear only existed because of the tiniest possibility that there was to be no more lighter moments, ever.
The sunrise still burns my eyes
I breathe and turn the other side
It's the blue skies I miss the most
Not all this grey I watch from below
He snapped out of his thoughts and raised his head. The sun had gone out on the first full day of waiting for the rest of his life and he didn't know how many letters he would have to write and how many songs would come out of them. A "yes" would be final and she must have known it too. Against all her hard fought determination she had started to believe again and he would never have forgiven himself had he let that moment slip by. Would she have forgiven him? He felt his stomach tighten - the tiniest possibility.
I've seen you sing and dance
Across every bridge you burned for love
While I remained still for you
Burn or die was all I could ever choose
She had never asked him to stop and he wasn't even sure she knew how. There was a reflection in her every move that drew him closer, made him act on instinct and smother his fears because if there was one thing he could do, it was to remove the fear from her life. She had not needed a man in a long time and he wasn't going to shake before her, remind her of a time when help was impossible to reach, no matter how much her eventual reply terrified him. Still, behind all his thoughts there was a vivid picture of a look in her eyes, reflected by his as they passed them on faster with every passing second, when her hand hovered over his arm until he took it. Her legs would shake then.
She never did ask him to stop.
So burn them all
I'll still be here, unafraid of the fall
You stood still once in a dream
That's when the blue skies came for me