There is a man in the chair opposite to you, face wrinkled and pose earnest, eyes obscured by the lenses of his glasses. There are cameras. There are people, pressing in, pressing against the glass. You find the chair comfortable enough, the bookshelves full to a pleasing amount. You try to ignore the blinking red lights, the whirring of the cameras focusing, the people pounding on the glass, the people being crushed against the glass, the people screaming out, crying, beyond the glass, to focus only on the man, the quiet dirge of his voice, the glint of his glasses. The cameras roll, blink to live, the old man’s voice drops another half-octave, and suddenly
~
You are in a field walking towards a square of red and white in the space up ahead. Even further than that, you see a blotch of yellow against the soft light, face tanned and upturned. A sunflower, you think, dazed, and laugh quietly. He hears you anyways, standing at the other end of the blanket, and gives you a light flick. There’s a basket, in the center, here’s a picnic, in the field, and you sit down and make fun of how his sunglasses make his eyebrows look. A comfortable silence
There’s a tapping sound. You look up from your sandwich and see him reaching into the pocket of his oversized hoodie. He pulls out a jar full of fireflies, buzzing and knocking into the glass, little lights and little wings. He sets it down, and bites into an apple. When you two finish up,
Later, they find his body facedown in the creek. You’re lost, for a little bit. You prune the rosebush and put a pie in the oven, and pen another letter that you don’t know how to send, to someone you’ll never know.
~
The two of you are sitting on a couch, side by side, him curled up, body splayed on the cushions and slippers upturned on the ground, and you, to the left, upright and curling an arm around him. The two of you are watching a movie, an old one, black and white, on an inordinately small TV set. It’s a comedy, you think, because you hear the laugh-track and the actress on screen keeps laughing this gorgeous red-lipped laugh. (Black, actually, but you figure that it’s probably red lipstick, beyond the confines of those monochromatic filmstrips.) You look over at him, about to shake him, pointing and smiling at the shenanigans on the screen, and you do, but something’s wrong. He’s crying. There are stars falling from his eyes, and they are slowly setting him on fire. You release him, and stare. The movie glitches. The audio repeats, the somber voice of the narrator and the sparkling blonde, all at once, repeats, over and over, “why couldn’t they have had a happy ending, why couldn’t they have had a happy ending, why coul
~
You see him again the next day, and you are afraid and tired. You want to leave. You want him to stay. You want another piece of pie from the oven that you meant to burn the forest down with. You think it was cherry. You have never eaten a cherry pie before. He’s still there, and he reaches out for your hand, murmuring your name like child’s rhyme. His nails are painted red, you notice, and you recoil.
So you take him by the wrist and lead him to the edge of a cliff that goes to nowhere, and shove him off of it. You walk back to your little isolated cottage, a lump in your throat, in your chest, a paperclip, stabbing into tender flesh and keeping all the ghosts of tears gathered on the edges of your eyelashes together and trapped, stinging the lining of your throat with salt and something that could have been an apology if you could have ever been brave enough.
You see him again, and all his limbs are broken, and all his bones exposed, and he still looks at you, with those earnest, wide eyes, ringed with insomnia and eyeliner, black and thick and heavy.
You tell him to leave, you curse him out, angry and hollow. You don’t leave the doorway. The sky doesn’t darken, as gray and neutral as after the first cycle, but you know night falls. You close the door.
The cat is small and white, and you can see it coming, from your vantage point out of the shot, from where your consciousness is floating to encapsulate the cottage and you and that small white bundle that silently pitters up to you and takes a firm seat on your shoe. It looks up, expectant, eyes dark and deep.
He was allergic to cats, you knew. (You thought it was ironic; he bore an uncanny resemblance to one, napping in the sunlight with a sweet smile on bowed lips.) You take the kitten in, give it (him?) a warmth by the fire, by the stove, by your side. When you go to bed, he settles on your chest, and you fall asleep to the rumble of another, fluttering heartbeat. When you awaken, the cat is gone, the cottage is gone, and you’re back in your city-center apartment. The cat is gone, sunken into your bones, and your heart remembers how to beat freely again. There’s a business card on your desk, emblazoned with those silvery glasses. You look out your window, and see a billboard emblazoned with the images of a young father carrying his daughter on his back and smiling out at the city, projecting upon it the wonders and importance of health insurance. And maybe this is forgiveness, maybe this is freedom. You make it promise to never let you go.