Paradise

I was his paradise. But it took him dying for me to believe it. I’m still alive but I feel guilty. Why him? And not me? Of course, I didn’t kill him, but I can’t help to believe I was an accomplice to his death. I was there. I watched the whole fukin’ thing.

I watched him stare and speak with me for hours. He would not ever dare to lean in and kiss me. He knew better. I was filthy; crawling with germs. My skin was covered in sand. Saltwater lived in my pores that summer. The beach lingered in my hair. It lived in the tiny cracks in my peach lips. He traced the freckle on my shoulder with his finger and asked me how the sun felt.

I tried hard to hold him down but his sickness was overwhelming. I wanted to be his medicine, bringing him that high for a little while; masking his pain so he can feel life for a couple of hours. I snuck him out to see the simple things we take for granted. I showed him what the summer air smelled like at night; what the waves sound like when they are undisturbed; what the sand feels like when it’s cold; what silence is when it ropes you up and the only thing you hear is the other person’s heartbeat.

I fought away my urges of crying, because I didn’t want to count these tears as an experience. Because this was a glimpse into hell. Having to carry this burden with me for years to come, a heavy memory of a tarnished love story. I reenact every scene from all those years ago. My face in my palms while I waited for the devil to come knocking. And him…he waited for God.

We knew our emotions were the only thing that saved us from the truth. I would pretend he was healthy; but he knew his time was running up. I chose to be encouraging. I could not allow him to simply surrender to this fate. I fought so hard. I battled the voice buried in my lungs from screaming at the top of them for the devil to take someone else…but we all know it does not work like that. I drove to the beach every night that summer and would beg to the black sky…Please! Swallow up his sickness! Please take it with you. Take it with you or it will kill him…

I brought him to the beach at night for one last time. He leaned in and touched my shoulder and asked me how the sun felt. It’s warm…and it massages its way into your blood…and it rushes over you…and then you feel at peace.

And he said; I think that’s how dying will feel like.

He traced the outline of my lips with his, and we both knew it was fatal. I felt everything around us just crumble. And the tears poured down, and he wiped them away. I will always remember everything you did for me.

The next few weeks, as everything grew greener, got older, got brighter, got stronger — he grew paler. He got weaker. He slowly was losing his youth, his glow, his hope. He was forgetting me. And that smile on him that I strived for so long to maintain started to change direction.

He was in a hospital room dead at 20 years old. The darkness swallowed up his soul but it will never take his spirit. And so we laid another angel to rest in the valleys of our lives.

His words sting the back of my mind every now and then….you will always be my paradise.