When The Lights Go Out

A short story on grief, written in 2014. Sent to and rejected by The Jakarta Post.

“How if I pick you up? We can… I don’t know, what you wanna do? We can just drive around the town or talk at a coffee shop if you like.”

“Create your own heaven here, on earth. Listen to your heart.” He scanned my face. He had a perfect look for a mid-30 husband and father. My very curious friends googled his name and found out that he was an ex runway model. It’s kind of scary how you can find almost everything on the internet. He made serious money by yelling at a bunch of teens. Making them cry hysterically, on their knees, pleading mercy to God after he made them visualize the death of their parents. He was a well-known “motivator” at least that’s what people labeled him. People label everything, really — mine related to angsty.

I shook my head, and he gave me a sad smile.

I know. He was once in my shoes. We have made our very own heavens, and it crumbled down, leaving this unceasing affliction in every cavity inside us. That’s why I confided my darkest secrets to him. Because he understood.

I kept shaking my head in denial, my tears ripping my throat as I swallowed. He gazed at me with clenched teeth. I bit my tongue until it bled, filling my mouth with the taste of iron. My voice was shaking when I asked him, “How did you do that? How did you get out of this blisteringly hell?”

He took one sharp breath, and that moment I thought, maybe he never did. A beautiful wife and precious little daughter, but how if there’s a small part of him still standing at the edge of his 26th-floor balcony, just one step away from that last escape? He bent. We were eyes to eyes.

“Stop ignoring what your heart says.”

“Really?” I laughed a little inside because it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. He grinned a little and pat my arm, “Keep me updated, will you?”

“Until then.” I walked away.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

“Why?”

“Tell me why and I’ll tell you why.”

“The sunlight reflected in your hazel eyes, turning them into some kind of wonderland, and I got lost. Just like that.”

“The way my ribs collapsing every time you wrap your arms around my neck.”

“You made me forget,”

“You made me forget,”

“About every touches,” “every soul,” “every pair of eyes,” “kisses,” “night rides,” “2 AM rooftop talks,”

He crashed his lips in mine.

“You made me forget the life I had before you walked in.”

He was eighteen years old, green-eyed. I was walking between the aisles in a music store. He was humming Asleep by The Smith.

“I like that song.” He turned to me and frowned. Pestered by me, interrupting his fine evening.

“Yeah?”

“It’s on my funeral playlist.”

“You made a playlist for your funeral?”

“Yes. And I’d like to have you sing it for me. Would you?”

Three weeks later and we were sitting on his balcony. I had been here every night. He smoked a lot, which was strange since he was a medical student. I perpetually locked my eyes in him, enraptured by the deluge his presence radiated. For nights watching him smoked, I thought there was something about a cigarette. But that night, he was there in nothing but ripped jeans. He tried to explain how the solar system works, broken dreams, and falling stars in an odd jumbled way. I traced his skin with my fingers, searching for any old scars.

We were two lonely souls, no feeling talks, no amorous moves, just two dead bodies with fluctuating thoughts and words. He never told me what happened to him. But I noticed every inch of him held an immense grudge; he was a vindictive being. I fell in love with him, but not in the way the rain always falls for the pavements for nothing in return. Not in the way I loved him. So I left a handwritten note before I shambled downtown.

“It’s not the cigarette that I fascinate about. It’s you. It’s the way you put your Marlboro Red between your lips. It’s the way you hold it between your fingers. It is how you inhale and conflate all the shining stars inside you with chemicals that will kill you at age sixty-two. It is the way you bite it, writhing in such disappointment because we both know the universe treats us wrong. It is the way I find you in the most comely form as you exhale, and I watch the smoke lilt its way to the dark night sky. It is the way you stare at me, every eight in the evening, in the balcony facing down the concrete jungle I adore the most, with rage in your eyes. Yet I find it fetching in every way possible. It is the way you smell like tobacco in the next dawn. Still, all i could think about is how you scream in your sleep, every single night, trying to convince yourself in oblivion that what we have was just a little dalliance.

P.S. You can find me in every corner of your memory.

He hung himself that night.

Three in the morning. Skin by skin. Shrouded by fear of losing each other. Fingers intertwined, I swear we were invincible, fused into one. Lapse by lapse, as the fear altered into cherishing our own infinity. I counted his heartbeat, trying to find the right word to define what we had.

“Promise me you’d never leave me.”

“I promise.”

I counted how many yellow candies and how many blue ones in the little jar. Then I tried to fold the straw they put on the table into the tiniest size possible. She looked up at me and smiled. I clenched my jaw. Our first session and her legs were moving back and forth uncomfortably.

“So, what happened?”

“Death.”

“Who?” I took one deep breath and stared at the walls behind her, “I built my life around him. We built our own universe in our fingertips, in each other’s strand of hair. He died. And my world died with him. And I died with him.”

“Don’t you think you sh-”

“I killed him.”

“What?”

“Yes. He had the most beautiful pair of green eyes I had ever seen.”

“You killed him?”

“I think so. I left a handwritten note, and he hung himself.”

“Are we talking about the same per-”

“I’m a storm.”

“You what?”

“I’m a storm.”

“Why do you picture yourself like a storm?”

“I think he thought I killed myself. I haven’t spoken to him for almost four weeks. I sent her daughter two boxes of Legos two days ago though.” I caressed my arm, right where he patted me that day. There was a brief comforting silence. She said very carefully, “Are we talking about the same person?”

“No.” I chuckled when she leaned back anxiously, curling her ringlets with her fingers. I made my shrink nervous. How was that possible?

“Why do you picture yourself like a storm?”

“Because the closer you get to me, the more you’ll lose your sense of pain. I’m a storm. I’ll destroy you most beautifully until your body system disguises the pain as butterflies in your stomach. At the end of the day, when you realize your insides are burnt out, leave you nothing but ashes, you’d figure out why storms were named after people.”

I didn’t cry. People gave me pathetic looks, but they didn’t understand. We dressed in black, I didn’t know why. Your favorite color was gray. Your mother offered me to read my eulogy. But how was I going to make them understand what was going on inside me? How was I going to talk about you, about us, when my heart stopped every time someone pronounced your name? We were infinite. Timeless. Limitless. Now it felt like a passing daydream. Was it my fault if I would never have enough of you? I didn’t cry. I figured out we didn’t have to die to be dead.

Come back, please.

It had been more than a year. I called him last night and asked him to fly over and do his magic on my parents and sisters. I hung up before he could say anything. I forgot to ask about his wife and six years old daughter. He called back few times, I didn’t pick up. I texted him, “How did you stop yourself from taking one step forward? Is there still a part of you at the edge of that 26th floor? Do you still remember the night breeze on your face?”

I called her, calling off our second session. She didn’t say anything. She knew.

I sent him an e-mail he would never read. Apologies. I should have stayed that night. We were two broken toys, misfit youth in a mad, mad world. And I missed his light green eyes. I should have stayed.

My scars had been bleeding flowers. Like a deer in headlights, I’m just one second away from my last run. One trigger away. Where do we go when all the lights go out?