SMILES after SETBACKS

One-cent miracle

The following is a short story I wrote in regards to abusive relationships.

   

  "One-cent miracle."

                                                                                   

            I stood there staring at the fountain. Its water a reflection of cool, blue resonating off the painted tiles that comprised its handiwork. I thought it ironic. That we throw wishes into water in the form of pocketed coins only to watch them slowly dance to the bottom of a marble holding cell. Wasn’t hope supposed to float? And what if one coin landed pompously upon another? Was that wish suffocated and prevented from coming true? What about the men who cleaned out the fountain in the winter, who gave them permission to remove the hopes and dreams of the millions who placed their thoughts in sinking copper?

            Alone, I looked around the cobblestone that surrounded the vacant park, thinking of all the footsteps that left their impressions upon the companionless stone. I pictured mothers with children, holding ice cream in one hand and fumbling within their pockets or pocketbooks to find pennies to hand their loved ones. The chubby fingers that clenched copper wishes and dipped fingers into the rich, water before flicking hopes into a ceramic god.

            I pictured men on cigarette breaks blowing smoke like pride out through their quiet mouths. Their left hands grabbing at suit pockets picking pennies and tossing them into the fountain as careless as they cast away their feelings.

            All that responsibility the fountain had, I wonder if sometimes it got too much to bare. I wonder if it cried at night, its water spilling from the cracks in its stature, afraid of not being able to satisfy, afraid of not being good enough. A lot of pressure it was, to house the hopes and dreams of those deserving and those who selfishly wished for more.

            Maybe I really wasn’t alone. I stood beside the fingerprints of those who believed enough in fate to cast a wish, a hope, a desire, a prayer, a question, an answer. The air was thick with yearning, with fear.

            The sun was just now coming over the tops of the trees, soon to cover the day like a security blanket and soon the park would be filled with the footsteps of those who lived their lives trying to be good enough.

            I held my bag tighter under my arm. I felt the weight it possessed, almost like the weight I carried on my chest every morning when I woke up and held in the pain I slept with the night before. I sat down on a bench underneath a pine tree, its needles who made refuge on the cool autumn ground, scattered oddly in patters unable to be traced. I swung my legs forward, backward, side to side. My decision as indecisive as his moods.

            I reached inside my bag, my palms sweaty, but the body of the gun cold and solemn. The indent of my finger pressed gently on its black exterior. I had left that morning most similar to every other, after a night of black and blued flesh and booze. He’d hold his beer bottles gentler than he’d ever hold me, and just like finished bottles he’d put me on a counter, empty so that everyone else could see my existence, but know nothing about my insides.

            I remember thinking that if walls could talk, they’d scream for me. They’d shed their paint and swallow me into their woodwork, to keep me safe, and to provide me the opportunity to see him for what he really was.

            This morning, when my alarm went off he threw my phone across the room, and rolled over pulling all of the sheets with him, my sheets.

            “Why the fuck do you get up so early? Shit. You shouldn’t even sleep here if you’re going to wake me up, now I won’t go to class and I’ll blame it on you for fucking keeping me up last night with your stupid crying. And for waking me up now with your stupid alarm! Make sure you close the fucking door.”                       

            I couldn’t even muster a response. It probably wasn’t even worth it anyway. I knew the walls were taking stock of all the worthless words and broken promises anyway. Someday I’d come back and retrieve them, I’d spackle their holes after I spackled my own.

            I couldn’t even cry in the shower that morning. There were no tears left, he took them all. I did my hair and my makeup, thinking that when they found me they’d know there was beauty in the breakdown, there was beauty destroyed, there was beauty worth preserving if only the right person had come along to save it and make it their own.           

            Making my way to the park my mind was completely vacant until I caught the fountain in my peripheral vision. Then it was flooded with thoughts, cultivating sadness into blame, into anger.

            Fuck wishes, I’ll give you my two sense on that one-cent dream. I didn’t get mine. I got a nightmare. I got bruised ribs and a superficial touch. I got self-mutilation and unanswered questions.

            I got the wrong idea of love.

            I reached for the gun and let my head fall in this emotion packed autumn. I released the safety and wondered if when a heart exploded it felt the pain. I wondered if there was even any more pain to feel. I stared at my wrists and decided that the cuts provided a map that illustrated the hurt I had felt, but had been unable to speak of, when suddenly I heard footsteps scuffing the cobblestone.

            Those eyes I could recognize from space, although I hadn’t seen them in the longest time. A green so perfect and indescribable, so inviting, so comforting.

            Without words he approached me slowly. Sitting down, removing the gun from my hands and dropping it in the garbage can that devoured its power and sent its bullets packing for a demise that wasn’t mine. Silently, he placed his arms around me and pulled me close.

“As much as it hurts, sometimes it is all you can do to wait, to endure, and to keep shining, knowing that eventually, your light will reach where it is suppose to reach and shine for who it is suppose to shine.” (tsg)

            I turned to the fountain and smiled as I laid out pennies on its edge for other quiet, victims.

                                                                                                           

Someone else deserves to survive too.                                                            

           
~vbr