Fire, Ice

🔹

Seagulls drifted across the sky's gray-blue canvas, but that didn't make the sight of it any less strange. No, it wasn't the color that was strange, because it was certainly a cloudy evening. It wasn't strange how the seagulls were still brightly awake at this hour either, or how they didn't seem to harmonize with the sky like a summer landscape painting. It was strange because, as Stacey walked barefoot on the dock and let abandoned shells prick his heels, he slowly realized he had seen a sky like this before. In some distant nowhere stretching invisible, fuzzy miles, he had walked among a scene just like this. It felt like something he wasn't supposed to remember. The thought swirled sticky lumps in his throat that fell to his stomach. Then he thought something shattered in some deep, forgotten corner of his gut.

Oh, shit.

For a moment Stacey wasn't on the ground, felt sick as hell. For another moment, he pondered the fact that maybe, just maybe, he'd crossed a threshold in his life he didn't realize was there. He stopped cold in his stride.

"Oh, should we stop here?"

Suddenly, Stacey could feel the gentle fire of Talia's hand again. Her grip loosened in subtle confusion, her scarlet hair ribboned softly and wildly against the breeze, and Stacey was alive again.

He squeezed her hand back into his, because he liked her warmth more than he should've. "No, let's keep going." He rolled his bare shoulder, cast a skittish glance ahead. "All the way to the end. I haven't been that far yet."

They proceeded their sway, hand in hand, on the ocean-sprayed wood. Stacey knew he should've been worried about what just happened, but he'd already forgotten what that even was. So now it became an internal itch—annoying, stationary, in the back of his already overstuffed mind.

Talia's hand gently ripped itself away. Stacey ached at this a little, but only a little—she just wanted to sit herself down on the dock's edge and dip her toes in the ocean ripples. It was a temporary separation, but temporary seemed like forever when he didn't know the next time he'd be holding her hand. Stacey sat close but just far enough, for she wasn't his and he wasn't hers. The water was cold and so was Stacey again.

Stacey settled his foot in a slow spin among the waves. Iced silk rolled over his skin, and it was crisp, refreshing, beautifully lonely. Of course he liked it. He'd always liked it. However, it would feel much better if he actually felt like being cold. Talia was only several inches away, her dress-covered hip leaking caramelized heat. He needed and wanted her fire closer, but not at the risk of becoming completely frozen.

So Stacey smiled wearily at the clouds, let the next wind gust send his too-dark hair any direction it pleased. He became so accustomed to pretending to be happy when he wasn't. It was the one thing he was good at, so he'd keep doing it. Then later, in solitude, he could go sob and scream his brokenness into the wrinkled pages of his poetry.

Cry and write poetry until my insides screech, because though my dreams are right in front of me, they're just out of reach.

There was mostly comfortable silence, but there were short twinkling bursts of mundane chatter too. A laugh or two there, a smile, a playful and irritating tease, until soon the sky was just dark blue. No longer evening, but night.

✨🔹✨

Written by Stace
January, 2023