Ragdoll

You gave off the impression of a Gothic Lolita: parasols, ebony curls adorned with ribbons and bows. You wore laced-up boots, ruffled skirts, and corsets with angel sleeves. You wouldn't be seen without nail polish as black as the night. You wrote. If you didn't have writing, you would most definitely have gone round the bend. As it stood, you were only jaded, not disturbed, even though you couldn't' be stuffed to hide the lines on your forearm.

He wrote, too, possibly for the same reason that you did. Under his pen, came a young man with chestnut hair and ice blue eyes, who was as hard as diamonds and just as brittle; who threw himself into a river at the crack of dawn - lips a frightening shade of lavender and smelling vaguely of the lilies and wet grass and river weeds all tangled up in mud and crisp cologne and the taste of rain, if a taste could smell like anything.

You fell in love with this pretty, tragic boy, and it followed that you fell in love with him.

You found out his name was Lysander. This was ironic, since you had already dubbed him your saviour. He was a manic-depressive and you, a unipolar; you fitted into each other perfectly. You shared dark secrets, went on trips none with the right mind dared to venture. While you broke apart in front of him, he stayed together for you until you returned the favour. You took turns with rescuing, and obsessed over the line that "People with guardian angels don't just lie down and die."

He was the lifeline you had been searching for, and you were more than willing to put your happiness into his hands. Pretty soon it became clear that he was the only reason you were still breathing. When you were not so preoccupied with being an angst junkie, he was your drug - the thing that was very bad for you but made you feel really good. You went on highs and didn't want to come down. You gravitated toward him, hoping the momentum never ceased up. After all, you waited to get lost in someone all this time. So when 'he' had presented himself, there was nothing that could stop you from becoming his.

He was the proof that your pain was heard and understood. You longed for the day when his fingers intertwined with yours, so you could walk hand-in-hand to the end of time. It was too bad that he was not here to last, when he promised you from the beginning that your life was more important than anything or anyone in it. The foreshadowing was there, if only the writer in you paid heed, but you'd rather live in a white lie than to be a sensible loner.

You stopped hearing from him for a couple of weeks and wondered why he did not keep in touch. As you counted on, a month had passed; by then you were writing to him frantically and pleading for a response. Three months went by and still no words, not a line, nothing to stop the tears from falling each night you spent not knowing if he was all right, if you still mattered. Toward the forth month, you world divided. It had hurt to love him, but you could not let him go. You were terrified that if you did he would really give up on you. You had to keep him - or at least the idea of him - alive.

You told yourself that you would stand by him even if you knew you were fated to part. You believed that it was better to have loved than to never know love at all, because true love was unconditional, and it was about the person you loved rather than looking out for yourself anyway. It hurt you to read his email, to hum his tune, to want to see and hold him but understanding that this was no longer probable. Remembering him, missing him... there was a living, breathing ache that coursed through your blood. Your heart was filled with heaviness, your body remained untouched. If only he was here with you, if only you could start it over. In the end, you realized a dream for two without realizing that you were doing it all on your own.

You did not question whether he had been the reason you were so unwell, or whether you were using love to bribe yourself out of unhappiness. You only assumed that he was too scared to lose you, so that he dumped you and then disappeared. But you had loved him so much, and love could not know such fault. So why were you afraid of mornings, when the darkness went away, or were you only afraid of the awakening?

You began to vegetate in front of the computer screen. You stared, trance-like, but ever so hopeful. You kept going at it. It could've been a year. It could've been ten.

Every now and then, you made out flashes of crimson red - blossoms of spider lilies for as far as the eye could see - as you found yourself being covered in rose-tinted snow. Other times you drifted on a lake of fire, which burned and drowned you all at once. Sunsets bled onto all they touched until you could no longer tell which was earth and sky. You wondered why there was so much red.

Slowly, you began to remember.

You remembered his letter, explaining how he did not give you anything that was not already there, how those things would not leave you even if he had been dead.

"What happens to maimed angels who lose their way?"

"They never make it home."

You remembered his hopes - for you to go on to do beautiful things with the life that you were once so ready to give up on, to follow your heart; you were not to follow him.

"Will I ever heal again?"

"If you give up being broken, yes."

You remembered his words, which said it was best from here on out if his fight did not include you, and he knew you did not need him in yours.

"My wings are broken, but no one can take them away from me."

"Of course not, falling is just another way to fly."

You loved red spider lilies, for they looked like fire and lit up the way for the deceased to pass on after life. You believed that their fragrance held a magic to remind you of promises that were meant to last forever, made a lifetime ago. Each kind of flower carried a distinctive message, yet you could not remember the meaning of your favourite. The spider lily in your hand was in full bloom. Like an open palm which had been drenched in blood, it reached up to the Gods as if in prayer or repent.

You had on the tearful smile of an angel. There were no petals to fall upon you as you waited for the wind to bring him back, the rain to beckon him near. You called out for love, and a piece of heaven that came and then slipped too quickly away. Was he not an angel himself, who fell from the sky and into your arms to be nursed back to life? Yet as he grew strong enough, he left you behind to die. What was the point of it all, if you could no longer share your heart with a person that was not Lysander? If you were only going on to search for another 'him', would that be at all fair? But more importantly, who would be here to remember who said "I love you" first, and then "I love you more"?

When flowers bloomed, leaves were fallen

As leaves rose up, flowers had withered

Leaf and flower were not meant to be

At the same time, they could never meet

The flower in waiting, not daring to die

The leaf that followed, learning to live

Whilst there was leaf, there was no flower

Whilst there was flower, there was no leaf

The beautiful and the cursed, mutually exclusive, as were you and he…

It was only hopeless love, for a heart that was never meant to mend.

That night, clutching me to your chest, you swallowed a cocktail of drugs and slit your wrist. As fireworks exploded in your brain, you went under, submerging yourself in water that was so much like blood, like returning to the place where you came from...

...and I did nothing, could do nothing, other than to watch in morbid fascination, like I had always done, as your most trusted confidant, your miniature replica, for I am your memories, I am your voice-

"My wings are broken, but no one can take them away from me."

"If you are gentle with them, they will heal on their own."

I am your ragdoll.