It smells like rain in the morning.
The room is heavy with the scent of wet stone, upturned soil; the air is dank and earthy. I take a deep breath and tiptoe to the window only to press my nose against the cool surface. Feel my breath fog up the glass. Close my eyes to the sound of a soft pitter-patter rushing through the wind. Raindrops are my only reminder that clouds have a heartbeat. That I have one, too.
I always wonder about raindrops.
I wonder about how theyâre always falling down, tripping over their own feet, breaking their legs and forgetting their parachutes as they tumble right out of the sky toward an uncertain end. Itâs like someone is emptying their pockets over the earth and doesnât seem to care where the contents fall, doesnât seem to care that the raindrops burst when they hit the ground, that they shatter when they fall to the floor, that people curse the days the drops dare to tap on their doors.
I am a raindrop.
The window tells me weâre not far from the mountains and definitely near the water, but everything is near the water these days. I just donât know which side weâre on. Which direction weâre facing. I squint up at the early morning light. Someone picked up the sun and pinned it to the sky again, but every day it hangs a little lower than the day before. Itâs like a negligent parent who only knows one half of who you are. It never sees how its absence changes people. How different we are in the dark.
A sudden rustle means my cellmate is awake.
I spin around like Iâve been caught stealing food again. That only happened once and my parents didnât believe me when I said it wasnât for me. I said I was just trying to save the stray cats living around the corner but they didnât think I was human enough to care about a cat. Not me. Not someone like me. But then, they never believed anything I said. Thatâs exactly why Iâm here.
Cellmate is studying me.
He fell asleep fully clothed. Heâs wearing a navy blue T-shirt and khaki cargo pants tucked into shin-high black boots.
Iâm wearing dead cotton on my limbs and a blush of roses on my face.
His eyes scan the silhouette of my structure and the slow motion makes my heart race. I catch the rose petals as they fall from my cheeks, as they float around the frame of my body, as they cover me in something that feels like the absence of courage.
Stop looking at me, is what I want to say.
Stop touching me with your eyes and keep your hands to your sides and please and please and pleaseâ
âWhatâs your name?â The tilt of his head cracks gravity in half.
Iâm suspended in the moment. I blink and bottle my breaths.
He shifts and my eyes shatter into thousands of pieces that ricochet around the room, capturing a million snapshots, a million moments in time. Flickering images faded with age, frozen thoughts hovering precariously in dead space, a whirlwind of memories that slice through my soul.
One sharp breath and Iâm shocked back to reality.
âWhy are you here?â I ask the cracks in the concrete wall. 14 cracks in 4 walls a thousand shades of gray. The floor, the ceiling: all the same slab of stone. The pathetically constructed bed frames: built from old water pipes. The small square of a window: too thick to shatter. My hope is exhausted. My eyes are unfocused and aching. My finger is tracing a lazy path across the cold floor.
Iâm sitting on the ground where it smells like ice and metal and dirt. Cellmate sits across from me, his legs folded underneath him, his boots just a little too shiny for this place.
âYouâre afraid of me.â His voice has no shape.
My fingers find their way to a fist. âIâm afraid youâre wrong.â
I might be lying, but thatâs none of his business.
He snorts and the sound echoes in the dead air between us. I donât lift my head. I donât meet the eyes heâs drilling in my direction. I taste the stale, wasted oxygen and sigh. My throat is tight with something familiar to me, something Iâve learned to swallow.
2 knocks at the door startle my emotions back into place.
Heâs upright in an instant.
âNo one is there,â I tell him. âItâs just our breakfast.â 264 breakfasts and I still donât know what itâs made of. It smells like too many chemicals; an amorphous lump always delivered in extremes. Sometimes too sweet, sometimes too salty, always disgusting. Most of the time Iâm too starved to notice the difference.
I hear him hesitate for only an instant before edging toward the door. He slides open a small slot and peers through to a world that no longer exists.
He practically flings the tray through the opening, pausing only to slap his palm against his shirt. âShit, .â He curls his fingers into a tight fist and clenches his jaw. Heâs burned his hand. I wouldâve warned him if he wouldâve listened.
âYou should wait at least three minutes before touching the tray,â I tell the wall. I donât look at the faint scars gracing my small hands, at the burn marks no one couldâve taught me to avoid. âI think they do it on purpose,â I add quietly.
âOh, so youâre talking to me today?â Heâs angry. His eyes flash before he looks away and I realize heâs more embarrassed than anything else. Heâs a tough guy. Too tough to make stupid mistakes in front of a girl. Too tough to show pain.
I press my lips together and stare out the small square of glass they call a window. There arenât many animals left, but Iâve heard stories of birds that fly. Maybe one day Iâll get to see one. The stories are so wildly woven these days thereâs very little to believe, but Iâve heard more than one person say theyâve actually seen a flying bird within the past few years. So I watch the window.
There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird today. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be aâ
His hand.
On me.
2 tips of 2 fingers graze my cloth-covered shoulder for less than a second and every muscle every tendon in my body is fraught with tension and tied into knots that clench my spine. I stay very still. I donât move. I donât breathe. Maybe if I donât move, this feeling will last forever.
Sometimes I think the loneliness inside of me is going to explode through my skin and sometimes Iâm not sure if crying or screaming or laughing through the hysteria will solve anything at all. Sometimes Iâm so desperate to touch to be touched that Iâm almost certain Iâm going to fall off a cliff in an alternate universe where no one will ever be able to find me.
It doesnât seem impossible.
Iâve been screaming for years and no one has ever heard me.
âArenât you hungry?â His voice is lower now, a little worried now.
âNo.â The word is little more than a broken breath as it escapes my lips and I turn and I shouldnât but I do and heâs staring at me. Studying me. His lips are only barely parted, his limbs limp at his side, his lashes blinking back confusion.
Something punches me in the stomach.
His eyes. Something about his eyes.
I close the world away. Lock it up. Turn the key so tight.
Blackness buries me in its folds.
âHeyââ
My eyes break open. 2 shattered windows filling my mouth with glass.
âWhat is it?â His voice is a failed attempt at flatness, an anxious attempt at apathy.
I focus on the transparent square wedged between me and my freedom. I want to smash this concrete world into oblivion. I want to be bigger, better, stronger.
I want to be the bird that flies away.
âWhat are you writing?â Cellmate speaks again.
âWhy wonât you answer me?â Heâs too close too close too close.
No one is ever close enough.
I suck in my breath and wait for him to walk away like everyone else in my life. My eyes are focused on the window and the promise of what could be. The promise of something grander, something greater, some reason for the madness building in my bones, some explanation for my inability to do anything without ruining everything. There will be a bird. It will be white with streaks of gold like a crown atop its head. It will fly. There will be a bird. It will beâ
âHeyââ
âYou canât touch me,â I whisper. Iâm lying, is what I donât tell him. He can touch me, is what Iâll never tell him. Please touch me, is what I want to tell him.
But things happen when people touch me. Strange things. Bad things.
Dead things.
I canât remember the warmth of any kind of embrace. My arms ache from the inescapable ice of isolation. My own mother couldnât hold me in her arms. My father couldnât warm my frozen hands. I live in a world of nothing.
Hello.
World.
You will forget me.
Knock knock.
Cellmate jumps to his feet.
Itâs time to shower.