The Faint Light

My hand reaches for my forehead and comes across a swelling of sweat. I turn to my side and reach for the bottle of pills, but knock them over. They scatter and roll like marbles across the floor. I mutter and croak, crack and then break all at once.

The mirror stands before me and as I go to leave the room, I catch the glint of my pale expression in it. I've lost more weight. I smooth my abdomen, running my fingers over my razor-sharp hips. Emaciating my flesh along with my worries, I couldn’t have cared less.

The sound of him snoring from his room confirms it's safe to move around.

I slide into some clothes, grab the keys, and head for the door. The creak and unmistakable clunk of the latch will wake him indefinitely and when I return I'll be staring in the face of doom, but hey. Annie Proulx said sometimes you just have to stand.

The rain fits my melancholy mood. Sexier when it pounds off my window and my hands are roaming the body of another, I love the rain in most situations.

I arrive at a shroud of darkness with a sole light at the end of a long walkway, illuminating the sky ever so slightly. Grey mist spreads across the sky. That light is my destination and when I reach there, my questions will be answered. I walk with a winter tremble, digging my hands deep in my pocket. Though vision is blurry, a smile comes to me. Time to face fears again.

If I die, I die untainted by the stains people leave. When tomorrow rises and yesterday dies, this life will still be mine.

That smile is bittersweet but everlasting and I walk with a subtle sense of elation. Here, in this darkness, tucked away from the rest of the world. What a shame there is not another to share my beauty. That light... so near yet so far away and when I look across the water, that faint light almost seems to break across to the other side. I walk in a comfortable stride, towards something. Relief, perhaps.

Sickness suddenly floors me. And I know what I've done.

Nothing to do now but fall on that grass and stare at the stars sparkling above me, the night sky normally looked so romantic to me.

When I wake up, the scene looks like the prophecy of an unpleasant dream: a dank light struggles to peek through the grey clouds, a small pool of vomit lays beside me, my stomach feels like it's been kicked for days. That faint light has gone.

Fourteen this idiot was.

I scramble to my feet and return home, wondering if I can cheat death twice.

My return wasn't welcoming, unsurprisingly. I remain watchful of his closed fists rattling by his side as he unleashes that dictatorial tone with a latent aura of violence exuding from his eyes. Smelling the sick on my breath, he accuses me of drinking. Rather than tell him the truth, I reply guilty. He executes his perverted excuse of love and bounces my head off the wall. I smirk again.

"You're a stain I'm going to wipe out one day," I tell him, earning a lame slap to the face.

He banishes me to my room. Solitude covers me and I drag my wounded carcass to bed. A smile soon warms my blood; on the floor, a poem freshly written lies scrunched into a ball. I never left it there.

His foot meets my head, and blood meets the floor.
Hands cover my throat; my life shall be no more.
Happy last look of him, the honourable Father
When he's rusting in a cell he shall gather
Nobody else believed love as an excuse either