“Because something is happening here

But you don’t know what it is,

Do you, Mister Jones? 

She shook her head back and forth, knowing that it was all finally falling apart.  Killing Sarah had been…what?  Was it wrong to kill a fictional character?  Was it a sin? Was it murder?  Of course not, she told herself.  Then why did it feel that way?  Because Sarah didn’t stay dead, that’s why. 

She didn’t understand.  Not any of it.  From the moment she and Marina locked eyes at the party, she’d been on a collision course with herself.  With the self she thought she was.  The way she thought of herself.  The kind of person she was.  And Sarah.  She was the personification of that girl, well the good half anyway.  But there was another part of Jenny.  Always had been.  The part that wanted to be bad.  That wanted to be a rebel.  The girl who’d given her professor a blow job and then written about it.  The girl who’d cheated on her fiancé with another woman and then married him anyway.

She buried her face in her hands and started to cry, quietly at first, pain building, tears thickening, rocking, rocking, rocking for comfort, rocking for sorrow, rocking for grief, rocking for guilt, rocking for shame, rocking for anger, rocking for doubt, rocking for certainty.  Relentlessly rocking as though the motion itself would cleanse her, of what she didn’t quite know.  And then she did.  Soul murder.  That’s what Sarah was.  A part of her soul.  And she’d killed her because she’d become inconvenient.  And then she’d brought her back.  But not as she was.  As something tainted.  Corrupt.  Riven with madness.

A sudden wind began to stir and pry its fingers through the cracks of the shed, grabbed the windows and banged them in their sashes, knocking flakes of old paint to the floor.  It slid around the walls, over the roof, moving like something alive.  And the sound.  It began as a low soughing sigh, building slowly to a throaty moan, then a howl.  The walls thrummed with the noise.

“Oh God!  What have I done?”  Raw cries tore from her throat, lungs squeezed the air out and sucked it back in, over and over, over and over, over and again, until she could hardly breathe at all.  Her skin ached for touch.  Her heart ached for comfort.  Just to be held, not judged, not hated as she hated herself in this moment.  She needed.  She wanted.   Her heart cried out to the woman who had opened up her world, but forgot to help her find her place in it.  Marina.

She grabbed her pack, jammed the printout into it, and ran out the door, down the walk, through the gate and drive between Tim’s house (she thought of it that way now) and Bette and Tina’s.  Walking fast, she slung her pack over her shoulder and jammed her fists into her pockets.  Before she’d walked six blocks, the first raindrops, fat and full of malice, began to pound the top of her head, slapped her face, stinging like sleet.  She lowered her head and walked faster, relentless need looping through her thoughts.  Find safety, find comfort, find Marina.  She felt nothing else, wanted nothing else.  Nothing but Marina.

*******

I have opened my veins

and bared my throat

and spilled out my life

in a place of no borders

across distance

beyond space

through time

to a name

a voice

a presence so powerful

it is difficult to breathe

when I think of her

She has slipped into my skin

my thoughts, my feelings

I shake when I think of her

How I wait

whenever I think

she might come to me

just a word

a shadow in time

a shape in the unformed darkness

the absolute essence

of everything

in this moment