Break the Sun

by CHRIS TOLIAN
Photography ©2004 Fred Ellis

A sad smile drifts to her eyes.  “The world ain’t so bright as it used to be.  All blazing and blue and so big.  Everything so bright and big.”  Her voice trails off.  Lips tremble once, face raised up. 

“Then the sun broke.  It just broke.  Light faded out.  Like it didn’t want to be here anymore.  Like it wasn’t worth it to shine anymore.” 

She fixes me with brown eyes gone liquid gold with tears.  “You see?”

* * * * *

“It ain’t so bad if you let the whiskey steal a little breath.  A little at a time til you feel like you’re drowning in novocain.”  She sips from her cracked bottle.  One hand lies on her knee, palm up.  She always sits like that.  Like she’s waiting, begging someone to notice and slit her wrist along the tattooed dotted line.  Words Cut Here in shaky black ink.  The lines squirm, organic and shifting.  Flash over into obscene graffiti.  Cunt.  Fuck the world.  No hope.

I shake my head.  Hallucinatory advertising stops.

“So.”  Bruised eyes catch mine.  Daring me to pay attention.  Warning.  “You gonna play the white knight?”  She laughs into the whiskey.  “Gonna fuckin rescue me?”

Her laugh is off.  Broken and harsh.  It never reaches her eyes.  Her entire being remains unfocused.  Her name is Hope.  Ironic.

“Why are you so sad?”

Her laugh cracks and she considers.  “Cuz life is full of shit.”

“No.”  I sip my own whiskey.  “No, it’s not.”

Unconvinced.  She shoots me a look leaking incredulity.  I reach for her hand.  She hisses, pulling back.  Crosses her arms.  Hide the evidence.

“There is hope.”  Hell, I don’t know what else I have to offer but words and promises.  The river almost drowns them, pulling the syllables into the current eddying just the other side of the railing.  Am I lying?

“Hope, faith.  It’s all bullshit.”  She keeps her head turned away.  Sulking.

I light a cigarette, inhale the acrid smoke.  Bitter layered on bitter whiskey.  I want to tell her she’s a fucked up little girl.  Not because it’s true, much anyway, but because that’s how she comes across.  How she sees herself.  It’s this mask she wears, spitting and cussing at the world as loud as she can.  Burning up with anger.  Angst and nihilistic righteousness.  But that’s not who she really is.  Can’t be, right?

Why the fuck do I bother?  A rage tries to build, but is stillborn.  Because I have to.  If no one else sees the potential… if those most desperate for hope can’t reach out and grab it, maybe it’s not really there.  I can’t accept that.  It obliterates any justification for life.

Potential.  Everyone has this potential to touch divinity.  To be sacred.  Not in a religious sense, but in a human way.  As a species we have the potential for greatness.  For fucking divinity if we can stop destroying ourselves long enough to see it.  That’s all it really takes; enough people with their eyes open for the idea to take hold.  There’d be no stopping us.  But, there’s the flipside too.  The potential to destroy everything and bring it all to an end.

I slam back the rest of my drink and the thoughts quiet.  I look at her.  Really look at the woman sitting across from me.  Pop goth fairy with blue streaked hair.  Heavy eyes and dark lip liner.

Her lips move, silhouetted against pale skin.  A silent chant.

“What are you saying?”

“Counting.”

Laugh.  “Counting what?”

“River candles.”

I look out over the water.  Thousands of tiny flames shimmer across the surface.  Stars and lights reflected, refracted.  Swallowed up by the water to parade downstream.

“The river’s kept some of the light.  Just a little bit.” Hushed whisper, like a little girl’s.

I watch her for a minute.  Lips stop moving.

“Want to walk?”

She nods, still watching the river.

* * * * *   

“Sometimes I feel like Peter Pan.”  She still hugs herself, words a quiet rush. Her voice blends with the river’s persistent whisper.  The bridge groans under us.  That little sway; the bridge wanting to break free of its pylons and tumble downstream toward the rapids spilling through the broken dam.

“Peter Pan?”  I grin in the dark.  “Like a teenage boy?”

A giggle.  Shadowed sidelong glare.  “Sarcastic fuck.”  But she laughs.  Looks back at the river.

“Like I never really grew up.”  She pauses.  “I can’t picture myself old.  Can you?”

That catches me up hard.  Expectations, reassurances.  I feel her looking at me, but I keep staring through the silence to the river.  Like a flickering movie between the boards.  Glint shadow glint shadow.  Click crick creak.  The river whispers hush.  I don’t want to answer.  I can’t even bring myself to try.

Solid ground.  Gravel and mud.  We turn onto a brick pathway.  Her lips move again.  I follow the bouncing arc of her cigarette’s cherry.  A dim red comet as it climbs up over the water and hisses out.

Dark.  “You’re not gonna answer that, are you.”  Not a question.

“I can’t picture anyone old.”  I reach for words, anything.  “I guess I don’t accept that people age.  Our bodies do, but not us.  You know?”

She’s quiet.  Takes my hand and leads me off the walkway.  “Boy, you’re so full of bullshit.”  Turns my face toward her.  Her hands are warm.  “Quit lying to me.  I just want to talk.  Alright?  None of this philosophical bullshit.”  She reaches into my pocket and grabs my pack of Winston’s.  “Never answered anything anyway.”

“Disassociation.”

Her eyes raise to mine, questioning through the lighter’s flame.

“Philosophy.  Disconnects the mind from the body.  Rationalization, logic and reason.”  I light a cigarette before she let’s the flame die.  “Like…”

She shoots me a withering look.  I hold up my hands in surrender.

Nods.  “Alright then.”

She takes off her shoes and sits on a limestone overhang.  Luminescent wake trails out making the river candles jump in the current.  Somewhere across the river a window is opened.  Blues slinks out into the night, all cool grind and hot wails.  Howling bout women and sex and the devil’s own kind of luck.

She stands in water up to her knees and rocks back and forth, finding the rhythm. 

“I hear every decision, every second of our existence is a choice between life and suicide.”

She runs her hands up her body, waving them in front of her face.  The tattoos flash against her pale skin.  She smiles.  “Know what I mean?”

I lay back, watch her move.  You can see the mood change.  It’s like the music flipped a switch and she can breathe again.  Her head is cleared as her body is subdued by the backbeat.

I laugh.  “And you call me philosophical?”

A little spin.  “Seriously.”  Eyes back on me.  Her face flushed.  She makes the music a physical thing.  Lets it into her.  Intimacy with the ethereal.

“I mean not just offing yourself.  But emotional and spiritual suicide too.  Closing yourself off.  Denying life.”

The words blend with guitar gone all plaintive and sorrowful.  Mourning some lost sense of self.  She kicks a cold wave my way.  Cigarette dies a wet sloppy mess on my face.

“You listening?”  She wraps a red bandana on, looking for all the world like a gypsy princess with her long long hair whipping around her in the moonlight.

“Then what’s your choice?”

She looks at me, suddenly still.  She rubs her wrists.  “What d’you mean?”

“Suicide or life?”

She turns back to the river.  Takes a step toward the dam.  Quiet.  “Depends on the day.”

She spins, pulling me up and over til we both tumble into the water.

I come up sputtering.  “Damn, that’s cold.”

She just laughs.

We catch our breath.  She looks away again, the water cold swirling around us, soaking in.  I start to shiver. 

“Twenty thousand three hundred seventeen,”  she says.

I do a double take.  “Huh?”

That laugh again.  Clear and bright and beautiful and ironic.  “The river candles.  That’s how many there are tonight.”

“You counted all of them?  That’s a big number for –.”  The water rushes up to catch me.  Fuckin cold.  Her laugh rings through me.

“Heh.  Sarcastic fuck.”  She pulls me up.  “Let’s get dried off.”

* * * * *

Water splashes against the tiles.  Candles seep greasy black smoke into the heavy air.

Her body speaks a history.  Silent eloquence.  Tattoos and scars.  Bruises faded to a dull yellow.  How do you fix someone that broken?  As broken as her sun.  Little rivulets outline her breasts, falling across a white ridge of old hurt on her flat stomach.  Navel ring glints a silver hoop.  I trace all this with my hands, the slickness accentuating the trembles, the tightening muscles.  A hesitation.  A paused breath.  Hand suspended just off her skin.  Anticipation of the touch.  Muscles tense.  My hands start kneading her shoulders, working along her spine.  Finally she relaxes.   Open and vulnerable and accepting of that.

If only I could have met her sooner…

“What?”  Her eyes are clear, looking up through wet tangled hair.  Smirk.  “Think you could have saved me from all this?”  Arms outstretched, she does a slow spin, exposing everything I never could have stopped.

“I just…” I raise my face into the spray.  Eyes closed, I feel her fingers run up my back, rest on my shoulder.

Voice soft, cool across my ear.  “I know.  It’s alright. 

She turns me around and pulls me to her.  So damn tiny.  Barely there.  Like she’s tucked into herself until only a sketch is left.

“I’m alright.”  Lips move against mine.

“For now?  What about -?”

“Does it matter past now?”  The hot water makes her eyes bright.  Droplets sparkle in the lashes.  “Can you love me for a little while?”

So many questions.  Too many words getting in the way of what I want to say.  I answer, my mouth seeking hers.

She looks up at me and starts, lips part like she wants to say something.  But stops.  Just holds my eyes.  Her hand finds mine, fingers weaving together.  And we don’t need words anymore.  We are here, really here.  Touching beyond bodies. That connection when you see the real person.  When you let them see you.  When conscience and thought get out of the fucking way and we are both human.  And real.  And scared.  But not alone.

* * * * *

“What happened to make you like this?”

We lay on the old red couch.  TV flickers over in the corner, volume turned low.  Blanket soft and warm and dry; cocoon against the dark.

“Like what?”  Feel her stiffen against me.  She pulls away without moving.  Distance doesn’t have to be physical.

She is quiet for a minute.  “Ah.  The tattoos.”  She hugs herself and I squeeze her.  “Yeah.  I’ve met a lot of bad people… devils and vampires and dark dark men who stole the light.  Chased it so far away it ain’t never coming back.”  She turns into me, buries her head in my chest.  “They broke the sun.  Showed me I ain’t worth a shit and sent me on my way.”

I kiss the top of her head. “You know that isn’t true. You’re worth so much more than you realize.”

A sob.  A laugh.  “Yeah?  You sure?”  Reaches to stroke my face.  “So where’d the light go?  Why can’t I see it?”

I pull her closer.  “The sun shines on you.  Don’t see how it could ignore you.”

Silence.  Warm breath and soft lips on my shoulder.  “Thank you.”  A whisper blowing across my skin.  “You gonna send me on my way?”

“No. I want you to stay.”

I feel her hesitation.  Feel the but…  She won’t.  Too much trust for her right now.  I wonder what her choice is.  I wonder what it really is.  She stands.

“I gotta go.”  She won’t look at me.

“Why?”  Not a fair question.  But I want her to think on it at least.

“I just…”  She puts on her jeans, grabs my shirt.  “I gotta think this one through.”

“I’m not going to hurt you.”  Gonna believe me?  Can you?

She turns to me.  “I know.  It’s not you I’m worried about.”

I’m quiet.

“I’ll be by tomorrow.”

I sit up.  Light a cigarette and toss her the rest of the pack.  “Okay.”

She smiles.  “I just want to do it right this time.  Ya  know?”

I nod.  “Be careful.”

“I’ll be fine.”  Laugh, looking out the window.  “Sun’s almost up.”

“Not broken anymore?”

She tilts her head.  Pause.  “I don’t know.”

Kiss her hand.  It’s warm.  “Goodnight.”

“Night.”  She sighs.  “I’ll see you later.”

I grin.  I can almost picture her old.  “You’ll look good with gray hair.”

She laughs as she walks out the door.

Cigarette hisses as it lands in an old cup of coffee.  Slip into sleep as the sun warms the room.

* * * * * 

Knocking.  Thud thud thud.    Percussive, rapid staccato.  Pulls me from sprawling dreams and the rushed hush of the river.

Thud thud thud.  I stumble to the door.  Turn the handle as a thick fist throws its weight against the bruised wood.  It flies open and catches on the chain, snapping it with a deafening crack.  I hit the floor.

“Morning, sir.”  Light southern drawl.  Too confident for this time of morning.  “We’re with the sheriffs department.”  His blue eyes find me sprawled on the floor.  “You wouldn’t happen to know a Hope would you?”

I’m numb and burning up all at once.  Then the shivers start.  No nononono.  God please.  I nod, teeth chattering.  “Yeah.  I suppose I do know hope.”

“I have a few questions for you.”  I hear papers shuffled.

“What’d she choose?”  I barely feel the words pass over my lips.  They taste bitter.

The deputy pauses.  “Excuse me, sir?”

More words.  But I don’t hear them.  I look out the window.  Shadows dance in front of the sun.  The room dims, a chill.

I slam the door and sink to the ground.  I want to cry, but can’t.  The damn knocking again.  Why don’t they stop?  Can’t they see?  I don’t want to hear them say it.  Whose fault is it?  Mine?  Hers?  Some dark dark man who doesn’t believe in people? Life, anything?

Why does the world have to break the sun?

I finally cry.