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Walking back to you is the hardest thing that I can do


Sunday, January 3, 2010

Midnight Ramblings

“You’re my heart. How am I going to live without my heart?” she said, as she placed the ashes into the ground. The air was cold that day, and she wondered if the tears running down her cheeks were suddenly going to turn into ice; and then just stay there on her face like strange little icicles. She buried Desiree on that day, and from then on she always felt as if a piece of herself was missing. On the ground, the crisscross of snow and dirt brought her feet home. She put her body to bed but her mind stayed there, frozen on that sad little hill, amongst the willow trees and the pale tall oaks.

And as her sister started to make one with the Earth, Ellen caught herself longing to rise up to the sky. She prayed for her ideas to finally mingle with the stars as the poet says. That idea had always stayed with her, because she was a romantic. She always would rather read than play with the other kids. It didn’t happen. Her ideas didn’t mingle with the stars, she just grew up. But from that day on, she didn’t have a heart anymore, or at least she persuaded herself that she didn’t. She believed that with an impressive strength; the same kind of conviction some people have that God exists. The same way you believe a fact. She knew her heart and all of the good that was in her, had been buried with the sixteen year old on Rosemont Hill, on that cold day of November.

Ellen thought about all the songs that needed to be sung, and that would die in silence because Desiree had gone. They used to sit at the piano together and just play, play for hours. Sometimes she grew angry with her sister for leaving her alone, but most of the time her sadness overtook everything, and that’s when she left home and didn’t come back for days. It happened often, almost every month. Her parents had come to accept it. They didn’t bother calling the police anymore; they knew she would come back with a new kind of peacefulness.

When it happened her mother always stared far into the backyard, straight at the morning sun, hoping to see a silk dress running her way, over the fence and into her arms. When Ellen came back her mother always cried, couldn’t believe and forgave everything. And her daughter cried, and cried, and said “I’m sorry mom”, and it was all okay because now she was home.

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