Stained Glass Souls (Wattys 2014, Collector's Dream Award Winner)

Ariel: Cold Coffee (Part One)

I want in fact more of you. In my mind I am dressing you with light; I am wrapping you up in blankets of complete acceptance and then I give myself to you. I long for you; I who usually long without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.” ~Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

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(Ariel: unedited)

The business of watching someone unravel was a terrible thing.

And it wasn’t just the unraveling that was the problem – it was the things it left behind. Bits of thread were stuck to the walls, thin and narrow as macaroni noodles. Glass shards sat upon the windowsills.  Unturned pages from old newspapers flapped in the faint breeze from the overhead air conditioning vents.

Each thing seemed to be faded, colors blurring together, a little more broken and a little less tangible than they should have been. Because, of course, none of these things were real. They were examples of what sorrow did to a person – a physical representation of how strange it was when people began to deteriorate, like clothing or objects or emotions.

The only real things were overturned shoes, sitting in pairs upon the living room coffee table, heel prints making triangles in the sticky puddles of dried soda. There was a pile of broken records in the kitchen, a steadily growing contribution of favorites to the favorite who had passed.

All the food had been taken downstairs in a whirlwind of bumped cupcake frosting and trailing sprinkles, but the musty, sugary smell lingered in the crevices of the empty rooms.

Ariel ran her hand along the wall of the entry way slowly, feeling the bumps and ridges of the flaking white plaster. She had been up here twice already, and around the whole house at least once.

Anything to avoid the basement, where the air was stagnant and the knots of mourning people cinched tighter to accommodate fresh grief. All the pictures had been moved down there, and she had only to open the basement door to find a pixelated 16x20 of his sad, uneasy smile.

Her coffee was cold. Lumps of undissolved powdered creamer were rising to the surface, skating around like water bugs. Each swallow ran down her throat, esophagus, into her stomach in an icy stream.

Hunger did this – drew things out, made the sensation of simply being so much more finite.

She wondered how long it would be before anyone noticed that, this morning, she had simply stopped eating. She could feel the dots rushing across her vision in a gentle black sweep, advancing and retreating with each breath.

She wondered if Iris had noticed the bowls of cereal, brimming with milk that she had been emptying carefully into the sink. If they had seen the way her jeans slipped off her hipbones this morning. She had risen too quickly from the breakfast table and the fabric had fallen, exposing the curvature of her swollen skin.

“You’re thinking about me.”

Ariel didn’t move. Her breath caught in her mouth, an unreleased whoosh that rippled through the silence. “No.”

“Today is the day, you know.”

“I know.” How could she not? Even now she could hear the sobs beneath her feet, rising through the floorboards. It was haunting. Gathering her courage, heart thumping, she turned her head slowly. Randall stood in the doorway.

His hands were stuffed inside his pockets, and when his head turned, face coming into a beam of dusty light, the feminine curve of his cheekbones was illuminated. And just like that, he was real. All was well again.