☁︎︎• 𝐿𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑛 𝑇𝑎𝑟𝑡, 𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑏𝑢𝑟 𝑆𝑜𝑜𝑡 𝑥 𝑜𝑐 • ☁︎︎

39

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.
For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?
O! therefore, love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.
Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

~~~~~~~~~

i lay silently in my cold bed. silent tears running down my cheeks. i feel dirty. laying in the bed that was once mine, but now, it only feels riddled with jack. his cologne staining the bottom of the pillow where his neck once was, piercing my nose like a blade. 

after hours of tossing and turning, i finally snap.

"wil, get up please. i need to wash these sheets. i can't handle it" i say, starting to breathe heavily as cold sweat fills my pours. i gulp and start to strip the mattress clean. bundling all of the bedding, i start to stumble downstairs.

the house felt cold. wrong. it was wrong. she was supposed to be here. it was supposed to be me taking care of her. this is my fault. 

i choke on my saliva and look down at the light gray sheets and quilt in my hand. it's then that i make my impulse decision. i drop the quilt and anything else my grandmother made, and carry the store bought sheets out back to the grass and throw it down. 

fully sobbing, i run in slow motion and throw lighter fluid, dampening the cologne dirtied fabric. without any forethought, my hand strikes a match. i watch the flame creep down the stick, and then i throw it. 

my face lights up, and warmth fills my body. my tears dry, i get up, and start laughing and yelling, and dancing around the flame euphorically. everything starts to blur, all i can see now is the orange smudging of the flames, and the crackling and popping fill my ears. 

"for fucks sake lavender" wil whisper-yells at me, before dragging me softly away from the flame and laying be back on the cool grass. 

"look at the stars" he says. and i do. i focus my eyes on each and every star for him. 

by the time that i gain my senses back, wil had put the fire out, and dragged the charcoaled remains to the bin. then, he comes over and lays next to me, pointing at the stars silently to redirect my attention.

we lay there again, in silence. just like the night in vienna. somehow he knew, that the stars were my happiness.  

i count every star over and over again, thinking about how many beautiful souls are being mixed in with those bright stars. 

out of the corner of my eye, a clump of bright stars make themselves apparent.

I smile lightly and say,

"you're up there grandma."