Torn
She appeared as a shadow first, something that the corner of my eye was drawn to; with a silhouette that created a pleasing enough image to attract my attention. As she stepped into the light the dark two-dimensional shape took form and substance, and immediately I was somewhere else altogether.
It was no longer just a cigarette break. Funny how shit like that happens: one moment you’re in the moment, doing moment-to-moment things; the next, you’re everywhere but here, with your thoughts racing and your heart ready to explode; a caged-up animal awakened and waiting to be set free.
That’s how we met… again.
Before that day I had never really seen her. She was always there but also somewhere else, like a painting hanging on an office wall or a doctor’s reception area. You’ve seen it a dozen times, maybe more, but you never stop to look carefully. Then you do, for no apparent reason, and you notice color and form and shape… and finally, beauty.
“Hey Dan, can you hold this for a sec.?”
She handed me a bag full of change and then bent down to adjust the strap on one of her heels. She smiled at me and said, “Thank you.” She could’ve said thanks or nodded her head or made a number of different gestures that showed gratitude, but it was the simple formal “thank you” that made it all stand out. Or maybe it was the smile. Hell, it could have been both.
I’m trying to remember it now because these things used to be important; these were the things that people talked about and wrote about before the war. They seemed to sound much more poetic back then; like their moments were different than the ones Abigail and I shared.
She was busy, that’s what I remember the most. She always had things to do and places to go. It seemed so damn important to her at the time. As for me, none of it really moved me– bills, jobs, places, and people — I was generally relaxed about those things. But she needed everything to keep moving. She often told me that she exhausted all other men; that what set me apart was my utter disregard for her pace and my ability to stick with my own. If she could only see me now and what these times have done to me, she’d get a real kick out of it.
I never did find out where she was going with that sack of coins. I didn’t bother to ask. After that day, I just started talking to her more; catching her regularly as I stood there for hours, smoking cigarette after cigarette outside my post.
At first it was small talk, she only had a few minutes to spare. It got better just as our surroundings began getting worse. I grew up thinking that certain things wouldn’t change — that the buildings I walked by would still be there, well past the death of me. The fires and chaos that come along with the struggle of greedy men, those were always miles away — in strange lands with foreign tongues.
“Look Dan, I don’t mean to be forward or anything, but I have to be. We’ve been talking for weeks now and you still haven’t mentioned anything about taking me out on a proper date. I’m tired of standing around with you.”
It was my turn to smile — then came the ‘thank you’ — not out loud of course, but in my head. But she read it in my smile and she felt the same way I did on that very first day I noticed her.
“Sure, dinner tonight, there’s a neat little pizza place around the corner we can sit and talk.”
“Excellent. If you noticed, I stopped wearing heels two weeks ago — all this standing around made me switch footwear, and I am much too young to be wearing comfortable shoes.”
She was odd; had a frantic way of saying whatever was on her mind in a manner that seemed completely irreverent, but apropos of the situation. It was a rare talent to be able to speak in a completely original way without being deliberate about it. She took chances with words and sometimes her poetry fell on my ears like rose petals on the ground. Other times, it was pure nonsense. It was always interesting though.
That night, over pizza and wine, we shared our first kiss. And the world shook. Not in a metaphorical way — the kiss was just the kiss — a first kiss, a nice kiss, with wet lips and excitement coursing throughout our bodies at the newness of it all. As we shared it, I imagine that somewhere else in another place — one of those places where destruction is a way of life; those native places that speak in strange tongues and normal is anything but normal — somewhere over there an order was given. It was probably a series of commands that set about a chain of events that ended with bombs falling on all those things that were most familiar to me.
There wasn’t another attack for weeks, but it changed everything. Everyone around me was trying to act like things weren’t different. The war that came after was an ominous cloud that permanently divided humanity’s attention as it threatened to consume everything at any moment. It dulled people’s senses to the point where there was little left of them to use on anything else.
I genuinely didn’t care, but she did. She cared about everything — the news, the politics, the retaliation, the reasoning, and the madness. She couldn’t just be helpless. She had to pretend that all that energy spent trying to figure out what was going on in order predict what was going to happen next could somehow affect the outcome of things. When it became obvious to her that the world was going to do what the world would do, regardless of her say, she continued those same routines out of habit; like a child who knows he’s outgrown his safety blanket but isn’t ready to give it up, the nuisance of carrying it around weighing heavier and heavier with each enlightened day.
The ongoing burden made her resent me because I accepted things exactly as they were. My apathy scared her because it was so different from what most people would consider a normal reaction. She wanted me to shake my fist in the air and scream with righteous indignation. She wanted me to fight back against the atrocities that the people in charge were inflicting upon us with their nonsensical power games. She wanted me to react to the injustice of it all. I never did. I simply adjusted.
Right after we moved in together another bomb fell. It came too close to us, and our new home, and the threat escalated.
“We have to move.” I said.
“We can’t just move; we have things here, there’s responsibility — work and commutes and all that other stuff. Shit you know nothing about because you don’t give a fuck.”
I didn’t argue with her — I just started packing. She continued to yell and scream — her tone matching the newly installed sirens on every street corner, warning of the air raids as they became more persistent. She unraveled herself many times over before we were done packing, but we moved — swiftly and quietly.
That first night was the hardest. Then after that it became another routine. The attacks had become more frequent and we all assumed the enemy was gaining ground. The lights and the sounds caused us to scurry about like a bunch of roaches; the sirens grew more persistent, indicating the presence of something much more powerful above us, trying to stomp us out of existence; all of this I felt, but I knew nothing of why.
Her frantic protests stopped. Her spirit shriveled quietly as her fear increased; until the day she had to give up herself completely. When her fire went out things became easier for me. There were moments of silence that took her fear and created intimacy between the both of us. She knew how to shrink in my arms again whenever I held her.
Then she died in those arms a few weeks later… it was all part of the new normal.
Abigail lay there on the ground, her shoes torn to bits from all the running and the loose change she carried around spread out across the floor, outlining a path between where we stood and the entrance to the bomb shelter we were reaching for.
She smiled — one last time for me. Then she reached up and placed her hand on my face and tried to say something. But when she opened her mouth, the pool of blood that formed between her lips gargled anything audible. Her voice was distorted and mangled, changing the words in much the same way the war changed her — changing them the way that the bomb that fell distorted and mangled her.
But the words were there anyway and I heard them once more, remembering the way they sounded before the chaos, death, and confusion. They still landed like roses at my feet…
“Thank you.”
“For what?”
Silence. She was gone. My world was different while very little had changed in the world.
The sirens began ringing again, signaling another wave of attacks, and I didn’t stick around. I didn’t take another look at her. I just ran.
I suppose that someone with more courage would have stayed longer; that someone with more imagination would have taken one of those shoes or scooped up a handful of those coins.
I think about that from time to time. I wish it felt more important. Instead, it only crosses my mind when things are still…
…but they don’t stay still for very long. The sirens come and the memories go and I act for survival.
“When the house burns one forgets even lunch. — Yes, but one eats its it later in the ashes.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche