secret language

OO4﹒the lakes

TW - mentions of suicidal thoughts

Betty

I get in my car to drive to the one I've been calling mine for four months in which I've been experiencing nothing but a feeling as if I were walking in beauty, four months in which I only had my daydreams come true and my nightmares growing quieter with the touch of James' hand.

He opens his door for me, and I take his hand in mine as I lead him to my red car. He claims that our cars speak of us; his is as black as his soul, and mine is as red as my cheeks. I ignore his simple yet effective compliments and drive him to the place where I used to escape to when I'd want to only breathe death.

I bring him to the lake near my house. I lead him to my only way out. I take him to the place where I created memories. The place where I went to mourn death after my family buried my grandfather six feet under. After the funeral, after my grandfather's eyes were closed and his arms were crossed, he was put in the dirt while he dreamt with the stars, and thrown in a box with the oxygen off.

I tell him about the literary sensation I get when I stand in front of this green, murky lake. I tell him about the Lake Poets, a group of English poets who lived in the Lake District of England, United Kingdom, during the first half of the nineteenth century. How they became such gifted poets despite not following any particular school or literary practise. I explain how they were associated with the Romantic Movement.

I explain how I believe they died. I tell him that I believe they spent their entire lives near that lake, writing, reciting, pouring their hearts out on paper and ink, falling in love with the sorrow that comes with understanding painful rhymes, mesmerised by the darkness of poetry. I tell him how these three poets sparked my interest in poetry. I recite to him verses that I have memorised. I tell him how much I adore poetry in all of its forms. I tell him that I want to experience even the most repulsive aspects of poetry.

The ugly part is that they died in the same place where they had spent their entire lives. Although there is beauty in doing what your heart is passionate about until you die, but how dark it is that the lake in front of me makes me want to relate to such agony. I tell him how when I was missing my grandfather, I'd go to this lake and wish I was one of those poets who did something they loved and died in a lake, drowning with nothing around to save them. I tell him how my mind thinks drowning is peaceful, just darkness. I tell him that, in my mind, drowning is peaceful because it's just darkness. I tell him I thought of death all of the time and how I wanted to be transferred to a world humans knew barely anything about. How I wished to be surrounded by undiscovered creatures when I die. Nothing in this world, not even death, was beautiful to me, so I wished to die in another.

I express the insurmountable grief I felt after fleeing my grandfather's funeral, the event in which I recited an elegy I wrote for him to eulogise him as the honourable man he was, how he was the tragic hero and the title character of my novel, yet to him I was his spark of happiness. I tell my family about how he made me feel, how I made him feel, and how he told me I reminded him of what it felt like to be young and beautiful.

I tell James how badly I want someone to write me an elegy and how badly I want to be remembered when I die. I told him I wondered how people would mention me at their dining tables as they remember me and the story I designed for myself. I tell James how we all become stories in the end and how we should all make it a story worth going to sleep to while feeling peaceful as your mother reads it to you before kissing you goodnight and telling you you're the sun in her eyes.

I tell him I never felt like I belonged without my grandfather, and he tells me he never felt like he belonged to anything either. I tell him my mother expected me to bury my heart-stopping waves of hurt under my skin. She didn't know how worthless I felt after his death. She didn't know how much I wondered what my words were ever worth.

I tell him that even after I've overcome the desire to be buried in water, I'd still look out my window at the lake and wish I could relate to any of the three poets. Instead, when I'd notice wisteria growing, I would go swimming in the lake. When I'd get out of the water, red roses would grow up out of what felt like ice-frozen ground as if my grandfather was sending me signals of love, I told him. I'd simply bathe in what felt like acid tears while my heart was filled with calamitous love and insurmountable grief.