A Breath Too Late - Rocky Callen Page 0,44
nowhere safer than his arms. That a long, long time ago, you were in love with him.
And then you had to cry in showers and whimper in beds and hide bruises under foundation and too much eye shadow.
I didn’t think August would ever hurt me.
But once, you had thought Father would never hurt you either.
Just like how when I saw him on our porch that first time, I didn’t know he would bite.
I was scared to give my heart away.
It had already been broken.
I knew how it felt to be stuck in a cage and I was afraid that the circle of August’s warm arms could somehow become gnarled iron bars that would trap me in.
I knew because that was your life and you had dragged me into the cage with you and I didn’t want to just run into another one.
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Momma,
You woke me up with a hand stroking my hair. I blinked at you with swollen eyes. I was too tired to get up.
“Are you having a nightmare? You were tossing in your sleep. What’s wrong, my dove?”
I was still teetering on dreams. “I don’t want to live in a cage.”
You stroked my hair again, teasing out the tangles. “You don’t belong in a cage.”
“But what if…” It was dark and I was partly asleep and so I was brave. “Are all men like Father?”
You paused your stroking and inhaled. “No, Ellie. Not all men are like your father, but you still have to be careful with your heart.” The way you said it, it sounded like you meant Don’t be reckless like I was with mine.
Then you gently put your fingers under my chin. “But that doesn’t mean you should close it.”
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Sky,
I was crashing through your clouds without a parachute, plummeting and screaming and the air was sucking up all of the sound. I was flailing my arms, trying to grab onto sunbeams and your cornflower blue, but I was falling, falling, falling and as the ground reached for me, I closed my eyes …
And woke up.
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Dreams,
You were cruel and felt so real and sometimes when I woke up, I still felt like I was falling.
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August,
You didn’t try to force me to talk to you or push me for an explanation, but after Jameson’s class when the bell rang, you were out of your seat like a lightning bolt. In front of me was a folded note. I unfolded it. It wasn’t a note at all. It was a drawing.
It was of our barn bridge. We were kids. We were sitting in the open-air windows, our legs dangling over the edge. My eyes were on the river below, a full-blown smile on my face. I looked happy, alive. I wanted to be that Ellie. The Ellie who breathed in brushstrokes and not the Ellie who felt like she would disappear drop by drop into the floor. Then I looked at the drawn version of you sitting beside me. Your eyes weren’t on the river.
They were on me.
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Depression,
I was so tired of the stories of heartache and loss that you kept whispering in my ear. In class, I scratched my nails into the wood desk chairs just to make sure that I was still sitting on them, just to make sure that I wouldn’t fall.
You kept trying to lock me in. But I was slowly finding the key. When I was distracted by college essays and saucer eyes, you got quiet. I was tired of the tender lullabies of goodbye that you whispered in my ear. They sounded so sweet. They also sound like lies.
And I was tired of the sinking feeling that kept the world so far away.
I was tired of being alone when I knew the world could be just a little brighter.
With him.
So whenever you crept in, I decided to punch back.
To fight.
You didn’t belong here anymore.
And that’s when I realized what was missing from my story. I pulled out my notebook and I wrote about pain, but I also wrote about hope.
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August,
I wrote about us.
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August,
“Hi,” you said.
“Hi,” I said back.
We were both looking at our feet. My shoes with the words sprawling over the white fabric, your shoes clean. It had been a week since we had actually looked at each other. I could feel the hum of energy between us, the pull and anxiety. We were on the sidewalk, but we might as well have been in a broom closet. The air around us felt tight, expectant, uncertain.
“I’m sor—”
“I’m sorry, August.” I was still