Ashen Past, Burning Now
“Let me give you something,” he says, voice buttery soft. He smells like burning. Still, I hold out my hands. In them, he pools a cold silver chain. It feels like water. I have to stare and stare to be sure it is something solid. He clicks open the locket. My mother’s face stares back at me, frozen in a smile, eyes staring into a distance I can no longer see. My stomach hurts.
“Where did you get this?” I whisper from my acidic throat.
He won’t meet my eyes. He closes my hands around it. The locket is the only cold thing left in the world now. He is burning and I am on fire. I drop the impossible past to the grass and grip his singed vest in my clenched fists. I want answers, not his shame. I shake him, force his eyes to mine.
He looks away again. The hate burning there is too much for him to bear.
“Where did you get this?”
“I was there,” he whispers the worst words he could.
Clouds pass over the sun, tilting us into sudden shade. We are the only bright things now. The moths press in close. I shove him away from me. He falls too easily to the ground. I am glad he is dying, now. That his ruined lungs and cancerous blood will save me from red-dripping hands. Though they twitch at my side with the longing of it.
“I’m not asking for forgiveness,” he says to the blades of grass. Coward. “But I thought you should have it.”
A short laugh bubbles out of me before I bite down on it.
I shouldn’t have this locket, I should have her.
I tilt my head to the sky, torching my eyes as the sun returns. Still I stare a little longer, until there’s a great, shrieking void everywhere I look. Better than seeing him.
Feeling in the grass, I pick up the chain. It is mine to carry now. I won’t leave it behind, even if it hurts to touch. I put it in my pocket. I walk without looking back.
