The Lost and Broken

it starts where it ends

I remember standing in the rain, shivering as my clothes clung to my frame, wondering if it were possible to die from frostbite before finals the following week. I remember watching in green-eyed jealousy as the children, umbrellas blocking the torrential downpour from their dry bodies, waved goodbye to one another, approaching their parent in a warm, dry car. My father wouldn't be here for another fifteen minutes.

I felt my pulse grow heavier, trying to keep the extremities alive. I smelt the petrichor from the forest nearby, and I heard nothing but droplets crashing against flooding bitumen. Vivid. It's always too vivid.

There was a fleeting moment when I considered finding cover back in the school yard, but my legs wouldn't give in to the idea. Instead, a boy as drenched as me traipsed toward the path I was stuck on, and held a folded umbrella out toward me. He looked older, artsy. His hair was too long, his uniform too small. I pushed my matted hair behind my ears, and glanced into the clear skies of his eyes.

"Shouldn't you be using it?" I asked timidly, unable to accept the offer despite the need.

I remember his laugh, short and melodious, as he nudged the black umbrella closer to my balled up fist. I remember the opaque fog that escaped his mouth, only to disappear in the frigid atmosphere. Without thought, without ease, I smiled back.

"I don't have any need for it," he said. "I like the rain. Don't you?"

I barely nodded, seizing the umbrella from his grip, unable to be soothed by the pins that unremittingly hit my back. The boy took delight in that feeling, though, as he twirled in a puddle a few feet away, white socks becoming stained by the dirty water. He looked as though he belonged there, in the water, amongst the dark clouds and abandoned pathways.

I remember I laughed as he kicked the water up and smiled at his ways, a glint in those pools of blue. He started to walk away soon enough, across the road toward a silver car that had appeared, when I called out to him. He hesitated on the road to catch my words.

"Don't you want your umbrella back?"

There was a point in which I knew what he would shout back; I could keep his umbrella. He didn't need it.

I gazed at those blue eyes, too far away, that made the thumping of rain alright in that moment. I held onto them as long as I could, afraid that when I looked away they'd be washed away. I couldn't remember what it felt like to be melancholy.

Yet I never heard the words escape his lips, I barely glimpsed his mouth form the words. Instead, the blaring of a car horn cut through the curtain of rain, followed by a sickening thump.

I remember how the world slowed down, so slow I thought it was going to stop forever. Part of me wished it had, because I'd lost contact of those eyes. I knew only of the owners features, nothing more. Suddenly, the sadness tore through my body as tumultuous and unforgiving as the weather, forcing me onto my knees, forcing the air to abandon my lungs.

Those eyes played in my vision, as real and alive as ever while the sirens flooded my mind. The rain didn't stop for days. The guilt never left me.

I remember this: I thought I'd never see those eyes again.