Dear Diary,
I know it has been years since the last time I wandered
your pages, and despite your inanimate nature, I feel the need to apologize.
You have laid quietly on your shelf, patient and plain; the perfect keeper for
the secrets of a crone. Upon spying your dusted leather cover, I knew you were the
only one in the world that would listen to my feelings now.
I feel that this withered paper-skinned claw is
in fact the only way I can express myself anymore. In these stale moments of
clarity, my pen is the only voice I have. The time between each coherent
thought is noticeably thinning, and I have been trying to appreciate them as
they come. So today, old friend, I would like to tell you about Darling. If
there were anything I ever needed to leave behind in this world, I believe it
would have to be her.
We met on a day
that sits like a stone in my memory, and the bitterness I felt at the time
still stings on the back of my tongue. The skies had been rebelling against
every summer plan the world threatened to make, and that misery accompanied me
as I sat brooding in Brooke Park. The swing I rested upon whined under my
weight, and I remember the feel of chipping rust under my tight grip, the metal
chains that held the seat too weak in my frustrated hands. I remember the
desperation to will away the pricks at the corners of my eyes, and how I failed
shortly after. Mostly, I remember the childlike hatred I felt for my fiancé,
who had left just that morning to aid in the war efforts.
It was all so
unfair. That was what my young and selfish mind had been brewing for the past
few hours. He was leaving because of some grandiose need to prove himself to
his parents, and it left me by myself in a place I loathed, surrounded by people
that alienated me. It had seemed to my narrow mind that the universe was
abandoning me, much like my would-be husband. Had I been left to my thoughts,
I’m quite sure I would have done something completely idiotic.
As something a bit
less important sounding than fate would have it, I was not condemned to my own
presence for much longer. A young woman, who looked to be about my age,
approached me from the shade of a nearby willow tree. I recall that I jumped
when I noticed her, and that her advance was almost ghostly. In the gloom of
the sky and the darkness from under the tree’s protective branches, the girl’s
silvery blonde hair and porcelain skin had been masked. It was only as she
moved into the clear that her pearl-colored form became altogether and vividly
apparent.
I had remained
silent to her progress, lips pressed into a thin line and head bent, unwilling
to further see or speak to this near luminescent woman. Even when the frame of
the rickety swings squeaked once again, signaling that she had sat beside me, I
did not move. Some form of ridiculous determination glued me to my seat. The
new silence that occurred from this stubbornness stretched for what seemed like
a true hour.
Then from the
corner of my vision, something small and brilliantly red caught my eye. I
lifted my head and glared with swollen eyes at the full crimson rose that was
being held in my direction. My anger-tightened gaze rose to meet hers, and I
believe I had intended to snap at this harmless display of humanity. However, I
never said a single word because when I looked at her fully I recognized a
shining set of teeth and kind blue eyes, and I was immediately awed into silence.
She was beautiful, and it wasn’t just her features that made her so. My
misplaced aggression drained away and I found myself reaching for the rose, a
return smile building on my lips.
From there on,
Darling was my single comfort in life.
We grew very close in the coming years, and as
the war grew worse, I found myself withdrawing more and more. The letters I
would occasionally receive from my fiancé came in sparser quality and quantity
until they stopped coming altogether. Darling did her best to console me, and
for quite some time it seemed to work.
She was mischievous and gutsy, I came to learn,
and the longer I knew her, the more I enjoyed her company. Unassuming in
appearance, Darling frequently drank and sang entire pubs under their tables. She
was loud and charming, tossing around her argent locks like it was a game, fearless
of everything. The men worshipped her, and the women tried, and failed, to hate
her.
I learned that she liked to believe herself
mature and settled, which was easily disproved by everything about her. I
remember her telling me about how black coffee was the only way to go, and how
her face screwed in on itself upon each sip.
Darling almost never spoke about her life, and
I valued that I was the only person she told anything. I was more than
surprised, and even a little bit jealous when I discovered that she was
married. He was apparently a stoic man. A writer. Tall. Average looking.
Getting the details out of her was almost as
difficult as nailing jelly to a tree. It seemed that they married more for
money and status than for love, and sometimes I would see a look of such
sadness on her face I felt like weeping for her.
I made many memories with Darling, including
the time we spent playing at every fair that dared arrive in our town. She
pranced about like she was made of nothing, and the exhaustion I felt paneling
after her was rewarded by the simple pleasure and fun it was to be with her. Each
time we went, she would save up her coins and buy Fairy Floss. It was one of
our favorite treats, and while she would hold the pink floss, I would hold the
blue. When we were just about done with each one, we would split the ends and
share our newly created sugary purple concoction. I found myself living for
those little moments.
There were so many things about Darling that I
feel I will never be able to fully illustrate.
The way she held her herself. As if she could
dance away at any instant.
How she wrote poetry on her wrists.
The way she would run and laugh in
thunderstorms.
Her voice when she was singing just to me, and
how she would sing louder when I teased her about it.
The way she tried her best in everything she
did.
Forgive me. If you had known her as I had,
maybe writing these words would not make me so sad. For then, you would know
she was not just a dream as well.
I believe Darling knew I loved her. Even though
we never spoke of it, and I never made any effort to make my affections clear.
I felt as if speaking of it would pollute the feeling. It would make it real,
and force it to exist in a world where it couldn’t survive. So, it laid mute at
our feet, both of us aware, but neither of us willing to raise it. I know
Darling loved me as well, in her own way, and I was content with such
attention.
It was not until Darling vanished for weeks at
a time that I grew anxious about us. She would send me away without so much as
seeing me, and it was by the third week of isolation that I had finally had
enough. I barged into her home, expectant to find her performing some idle
chore, but when I found my way to her, the accusatory words that had been
building under my tongue fizzled and died.
A third of her face was swollen blue and
purple, savage marks ripped across her lips, cheekbones, and brow. One of her
crystalline eyes peered at me through a slit, and when recognition shone in her
irises, panic followed shortly after. She told me immediately that I needed to
leave. I remember how I stood there in complete shock, my ignorant brain trying
to piece together what was going on. My hands had risen and fallen uselessly,
and my mouth hung open like a dead fish.
When the story finally came to fruition, I
pulled Darling close and wrapped my arms around her. She had stood like a
statue in my embrace, and had it not been for the wet warmth on my shoulder, I
would have thought her indifferent to my attempts of comfort.
Once we had separated, I made her tell me
everything. She did, for the most part. To this day, I am sure she shielded me
from the worst of it, but I feel some peace at knowing she could tell someone
eventually.
As the story went, Darling told me her husband
had been fired from his last deal, and he relieved himself with the company of
alcohol and ladies of the night. Then he would come home late and let out other
forms of frustration on his convenient wife. It was the unlucky dark hours in
which Darling was awake that this would occur, and being the woman she was,
speaking out to him or anyone else would do no good.
My blood had built to boil by the time she
finished, and I turned my head in shame. I hadn’t known, and now that I did
know, I could do nothing about it. I remember my hands had gripped hers
tightly, as if that alone would be enough to protect her, and she’d smiled
messily at me. After that, the days went on, and I went to see her more often.
I had understood that if I were always around, I could be there to worsen the
blows, so to speak.
I despaired to realize the endeavor was hopeless,
though. Time soldiered on and I could not always fill Darling’s home with my
shielding presence. The bruises continued and worsened, and I watched the woman
I loved decay before me. Her glossy hair turned frayed and lackluster.
Intelligent eyes dulled and the sowed lines of her face betrayed her usually
elusive age. Her smile was a mere phantom of the past, and inspired more
sadness than joy.
I knew she was dying, and I was useless to stop
it. A depression fiercely dissimilar to the loss of my fiancé struck me, and
the days we so usually spent in merriment were replaced by hushes of comfort
and implicit fear. We were waiting.
Would that night be the last I had with
Darling? Would the next? When would it happen? Our lives became paralyzed with
paranoia until a particular night heard a frantic ringing at my doorbell. I stepped
into the winter only to be greeted by Darling’s battered face. A wince escaped
me at the sight of her, which she promptly ignored. She grasped my hands and
stood close, pressing her cold forehead to mine. I squinted blearily at her,
unsure of what to say, but thankfully she spoke first. Only a single sentence
escaped her before she was off again like mist, into the dark and deaf to my
questioning shouts.
The next day I regretted not following after
her. I stopped by her house as I had made a pattern of doing, and when the door
swung away from me I found myself looking into the red-rimmed eyes of Darling’s
husband. I believe I asked him a question, but I do not remember what it was.
The next truly conscious memory I have is of standing in front of Darling’s
coffin, staring down at her paste-textured face. Perhaps my mind can be held
responsible, trying to shelter me from the worst moments of my life.
Now that I think back on it, I’m sure Darling
would have found the situation rewarding. Her husband sobered completely, and
nearly the entire town came to celebrate her life. She had made her mark, and
on none other so clearly than myself.
Where one of my loves had left me sour and
alone before, this time was very different. Gone was the childlike frustration
and hatred for existence, and instead I was filled with an obscure form of
peace. Loneliness had bothered me incessantly before, and now it sat with me
like an old friend. I spoke to no one and no one spoke to me. A silent contract
the world and I held.
It seemed only appropriate that I exchange
Darling’s red rose for a white one of my own. So, I paid her back time and time
again, until I became too brittle to walk, and too old to talk. I know I will
die in this house and my frequent comfort lies in the words Darling said to me
on that particular night.
Even as the last wisps of my
mind fade, I will hold that precious aphorism tightly, and take it with me as I
prepare myself to meet my her again.
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