Forgiveness

[Keo]

(I'm trying to clean it up a bit, make it a little less confusing, and seeing if it's a style I should invest more time in exploring. (: )  


“I won’t forgive you.”

His voice cut through her, like the cold she’d been feeling for the past few hours.
Rain dripped down her nose, and she stared at her feet, standing in a puddle in the silvery light of a streetlamp.
“You’re forgiven.” she whispered, droplets rippling the growing pool underneath her feet. “I forgive you.”
“I hate you.”

Her hands remained at her side, calm and white and covered in little red sparks. She remembered being in his kitchen, sitting on the counter and him laughing. Telling her that no one had skin like hers, bright and open, like fireworks. And no one did quite have her skin, the skin that seemed to coat her heart and let her be cut open.

“I forgive you.”
“You’re ugly.”

His voice. The laugh that went up three notches when he was laughing at her. Laughing at her gentle jabs and jabbing back with more sharp than she could usually stand. But she always smiled. She liked being with him, being around him, and if that meant her heart was cut open every time he talked about her then that was fine. Her heart was tender, but it wasn’t weak in any way.

“I love you.”
“I don’t need you.”

Oh how she loved that house, the place where her son had been born. The place where she’d left so much of her, so much of her was still there. In that hallway, when he yelled at her and she smiled, the tears that had always been there only just starting to fall. Her heart was open, and she let him take it. She let the boy take it, the crying little child clinging to her fingers all day. His wispy hair that she brushed back to kiss his peachy forehead.

“I don’t know you.”
“I miss you.”

Her hands reached for him, her little one, the only one left. The one she missed with her bare, raw bloody heart. The heart that gave and gave and gave. The heart that never learned to be safe. The heart that kept on loving and loving and loving. She reached for her son, seeing in his blue-brown eyes every bit as much of her as his father. He did look like her. His soul carried her fingerprint, no matter how many times he cut and cut and stabbed her heart. No matter how often he left, how often he forgot her and left.

“Leave me alone. I asked you to stay away.”
“I know you. I love you. I want you.”

The salty tears were no more noticeable than the puddle of rain at her feet, they made her face no more wet than the rain had. Maybe she hadn’t cried, maybe she was just reciting from a script in her head. Maybe she was just trying again to make the boy love her, the boy that she created and loved. The boy who treated her like his father had, the boy that learned hardness and only knew closed hearts and stoppered souls. The boy who thought he knew love, who thought he was loved enough. But he didn’t know his mother. He didn’t know her any more than the crushed box of cigarettes in the shining street.

“I don’t want you. I don’t need you.”

And how his words cut. How they tore back the tissue paper firework skin over her heart. The skin that just barely covered, the skin that stretched tight and bulged with the strain of containing the pulse of life within her chest. And how she loved him.

“I’m here for you. Anything you want.”

His hair had turned dark in the wet, and the red showed through the stain of brown his father had given him. He looked like a two-shelled being, a boy with his father’s skin and his mother’s insides, glowing from the inside out. And he couldn’t see it. How the warmth kept him alive, how the cold of his skin kept himself from the world. How his heart was like hers, covered in so many layers of dark and cold and empty that he couldn’t see it. Couldn’t use it.

“You left. You left me.”

Her heart beat, and thrashed and threw itself against her lungs and her throat. It hurt. The feeling that day, when she couldn’t stay there any longer. When she left, because they would take her away if she didn’t. She didn’t want her boy to see his father for the dark hole that he tried to be. So she smiled and waved, and blew a kiss and left. Got a cab and went away. And now, that the darkness had ebbed, she wanted to tell him. She wanted to tell him all the stories she knew, all the bedtime tales she had made when she was gone. All the bears and rabbits and and turtles that spoke about wisdom and missing and love. About why leaving always happened. About why she had left. And how much it had hurt, to think of them each day and still be able to smile. She wanted to tell him, about the days that she needed to smile, the days that missing them was almost too much and she wanted to go back. She wanted to tell him how her heart had nearly thrown itself out of her chest, how she needed to smile.

“I need you.” She whispered.
“I don’t.”

She had so much to tell. She wanted to tell about the times she held him, and rocked him, and kissed his ears, his button nose and got him to smile when he’d fallen down. She wanted to tell him about the chalk on the front porch, about how she’d always made sure he could laugh. She wanted to tell him about the tree in the yard, the tree that used to be was. The tree that held flowers and sunshine, the tree that he ran around and fell across and laughed over and cried in front of. She wanted to tell him about the times he was happy. About the neighbors who smiled and pointed and said “that is one lucky boy”.
And the tears fell. The tears welled up and scrunched in her eyes and blurred his figure. And she blinked them away, scrubbing her face clean of tears with her long rough sleeve so she could see him. So she could see her precious boy. The boy she was losing. The boy she had lost. The one she loved and loved the more she lost him. The one she couldn’t stop loving and loving. The one she was just now beginning to see, wouldn’t fit in the place in her heart, the place she’d prepared for him. The cozy, warm and well lit place she had so carefully left open and ready. The place he couldn’t fit into anymore.

“I love you.”
“I loved you. And that wasn’t enough.”

She looked into his eyes, his muddy blue eyes that were open, the eyes that reflected his heart and soul and told her that he had seen too much. That he was no longer the person she loved. He had changed. He had grown up. He had been hurt. His heart had learned to protect itself, to close up and cover itself in too many layers than it needed to stay warm. He had learned that he couldn’t forgive her, that his hurt was too large, had happened too long ago, that it had left a scar. And that, no matter how much, he couldn’t love her like he had. He’d forgotten how to, somewhere in all those layers of darkness and damp and cold. He’d lost the boy who had jumped on the bed with his mother and cried until she kissed the spot that hurt. He’d locked it away until it had forgotten it existed, and it had gone away. It had died. All the layers of ash on his soul were there for a reason, each one had an event and a purpose.

“I will love you. I will help you learn again.”
“He is cracked, and you are open. I am closed, and I don’t need you anymore. Not like I used to.”
“I want to see him. I want to see you see him. I want it all back.”
“That’s selfish. He doesn’t want it, and neither do I.”
“That’s only because I wasn’t there. Because I’m not there, holding you together and filling you up.”
“You don’t need to fill me up. You don’t need to fill him up. He’s cracked, and I am closed. You will spill right through him, and right over me. We no longer need you.”
“I know. And I still want to love you. I still won’t give up. I will patch the crack and earn your key.”
“There is no key, and there is no patch strong enough.”
“I haven’t tried yet. I haven’t seen him yet. I haven’t tried looking yet.”
“Just because no one has tried. Just because no one has looked, just because no one has tried, does that mean that you should try?”
“I love you.”

He shook his head then, his eyes lowering. He didn’t know love anymore. He wasn’t familiar with its rapid beat, its unwavering devotion and powerful thud. He had forgotten its bright light, its strength and determination. Its willingness to fill the spots no one else deemed safe, to heal the spots no one wanted to look at.
“I want to see him. I want to know him again. I want to know you again.”
“There is no chance, there is not even a single ray of chance. But I’ll take you. I’ll tell him. I’ll let you stay somewhere in my mind. I’ll stop pushing you away. Because I want a chance. Even if there isn’t, I want one. I want it to change, and I want to love you again. I’ve given up, and I want you to change that. I want him to start living again. I want him to find the love he’s been looking for. I want you to find the key, I want you to patch the crack, even if I don’t believe it can happen. I want hope. I hope I’m wrong. I want love, and I want him to want love again. I want to let you love again.”