Reasons to Live - a collection of flash fiction stories

Saudade

She was havoc playing on my soul. A million matchsticks dancing on my cancer stick. The whirlwinds in her eyes brought me to my knees time and time again. She was nestled somewhere between breast and bone, somewhere in the mirror of my madness where dark things should be placed and loved.    

She was a tempest thundering inside, a sharp, throbbing plea of salvation. In the mirror she placed before me I whispered long-forgotten prayers and it shattered onto the floor. She never ever minded the splinters that stuck with her and left stains of crimson on the floor of the halls of her mind.

She was more than a turn of the screw, more than the missing mile mapped out on the trail I had left from elbow to wrist.  I knew of all of her nightmares I knew that she spoke of 4 AMs and testimonial dreams.

Without her I am the aftermath of a hurricane; a wreck of broken bones and broken thoughts. I am a folder full of suicide letters I never sent out. Without her, I am nothing. Yet when she comes running to me, a tangle of monsters in her arms, I feel the sun and moon have risen. She keeps them safe in the corners of my life, they dance and dine with the angels I have long since locked away. Turn the screw till it hurts; I will still remember.

She was brilliance among a shelf of lies. The last few drops of vintage bourbon that burnt my tongue after I had swallowed. At nights, in dreams she lingers, like a phantom dancing on the walls. I reach, my hands no longer feel her, velvet and soft. A million matches set alight, they come and burn what the bourbon could not reach. I touch. I shiver. I turn, tighter. 

© Christine Bottas. All rights reserved 2015-2017.

* Saudade: a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.