Tear Drop on the Fire

 By Britagne Turner

Not too long ago, I had traded my youth for a more jaded perspective on life. I conditioned myself not to trust anyone and had driven it into my skull that love was for asinine idealists who needed to use someone else as a crutch. I had decided that matters of the heart are truly matters of weakness in one’s personality. I thought I had fallen in love one time. In high school, I found a boy who mirrored many of my mental demons, we related to each other but essentially we were a beautiful combination for self-destructive disaster. He convinced me that I was too fat and unattractive to find anyone else, so I stayed with him out of low self-esteem. But then I turned 18 and almost overnight I left 40 pounds behind me- along with the skin that was covered in the strange glue holding us together. Then we both came apart at the seams. I realized what he was doing to me: that he was a demon I was clothing and feeding. Eventually, my soul and spirit each had their own limit so I left him- kicking and screaming like a spoiled child- while I did the victory dance with my middle fingers in the air. So it turns out that I hadn’t fallen in love, but I had stepped in it. Having cried my last tear, I took a steak knife to my eyes, so to speak. I’d hardened my heart and the only intimacies I allowed were counterfeit and shallow affairs. But suddenly, I found myself questioning my cynical doctrine- someone had astonishingly infiltrated my heart.

 An unforeseen showdown: my lackluster life was beginning to sparkle. I was gazing into my lover’s eyes, staring down the barrel of a gun. I never had a qualm with telling Lloyd that I adored him and that he was the most desirable man I’d ever met because it was true. This man protected me in every sense of the action. I have an overwhelming fondness of his strength- he’s rough around the edges but I value his hard earned and even harder to swallow callousness. Lloyd makes his own decisions and stands by the consequences…obviously a lesson learned from years of hiding away from agonizing tribulation caused by him and placed on him as a young adult.  Because of this, he has been able to reach and relate to me in a way that no one has ever attempted. We share many of the same pains and demons but we also share the fact that we have excersized them on our own. With all of these things painfully palpable, I chose to live in denial. I made the white heat of my love into a comfortable household fire because I couldn’t say, “I love you”.

 One night, we sat on the floor of his apartment together, high as kites. His apartment seemed lonely and empty when I had first met him, no couches or dining table: very unlike my own place, which was filled with many social areas. But, honestly, it looked like he never had any company. He said that the people he brings into his house are very carefully chosen. The only people I had ever seen there was his malevolent step mother- who wasn’t invited in, and his best friend, Todd. His bedroom was originally a rather daunting place for me at first. The walls were stark white all over the loft except for the wall by his bed and the one adjacent to it by the stairs. Right above the head of his bed was a large black star and trailing through and after it were his own painful words scrawled in black: “Lloyd, stop smoking cigarettes, drinking, wasting your life…on love…NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE POWER OF DENIAL…” The last six words burned into the back of my eyelids every night that I went to sleep with him.

Since getting to know Lloyd, the apartment no longer seemed so barren. I began to appreciate the pictures framed and posted on the walls- his portfolio pictures (very glam and faux and not his personality at all), pictures of him with people he was in movies with, a picture of a nameless girl, and the one picture I never stopped staring at when I was alone in his room: the one of him with his first wife. He was too young to have had a wife; they lived in a methamphetamine fantasy. When the drugs ran out, the dream was over and the awakening was very rude. Regardless, he did love her and I wondered if I would live up to her legacy. He assures me that I will out live it. I loved his room; his character was splattered on the walls and scattered all over his floor. I loved feeling him all around me, but of course I never told him this.

This particular night, I decided to stay over- nothing new, I was there every damned night. Our brains were clear in the clouds this evening due to an old friend and weakness.

      “I like you, Lloyd…no I adore you.”

      “And I you.”

      “You’re beautiful.”

He met his dark stormy eyes with my pale grey ones, curled up the corner of his bowtie lips, and peaked his right eyebrow (this expression was his weapon to totally melt me down). “Gorgeous, tell me that again when I’m sober.” A big dolphin smile spread across my visage; I pounced onto his lap straddling him face-to-face. He sank his fingertips deep into my back and clamped his teeth in a trail up my neck. Feeling an intense rush of blood to my head, I pulled back and experienced my most primal urges overtaking my thought process and declaring absolute authority over my body. I dug my fingernails into the back of his neck and dove in head first tasting his tongue on mine and feeling the ecstatic pain of his teeth tightly fixed around my bottom lip as our hips undulated in simultaneous motion. Slowly, calmly I felt his fingers fumbling for the zipper on my tank top and freeing porcelain skin sprinkled lightly with freckles trailing from one shoulder to the other. I lay back as he sat upright between my thighs and traced his fingers over every line of my body gracefully unclasping buckles and skillfully undoing buttons. Within short sweet moments, my clothes were nothing but an empty pile on the floor. He leaned over top of me and licked his sexy-to-kiss-sexy lips, “Close your eyes…”

I stared at the back of my eyelids, my heart began to race and jump up into my throat. I heard Lloyd stand up and walk away, I felt and still saw nothing as I lay rigid on the carpet. Music began to play from his computer speakers. I perceived him moving toward me, felt him put his hands on me, he pressed his body on top of mine. Suddenly, I was engulfed in an ocean of tangled tongues and locked lips moving to the rhythm of the music. 

      Something beautiful is happening inside for me

      Something sensual it’s full of fire and mystery

      I feel hypnotized, I feel paralyzed

      I have found heaven 

Time was absent in the abyss of sweat, tears, and screams. Explosions left my fingers numb and my heart pounding harder than before. The rhythm slowed to a stop as my eyes un-rolled from the back of my head. Deep breath. “Do you want some water?” The light came on, “Yes, thank you.” I sat up and discovered we had maneuvered onto the bed without my even noticing it. “Here you go, baby.” I extended my shaking numb arm to grasp the water glass. Lloyd sat down on his office chair in front of his desk to turn down the computer speakers. “There’s something I need to tell you, gorgeous.” His eyes, nearly all blacked with a tiny ring of deep blue penetrated the space between us and struck me with urgency. I crawled off of the bed, weak-kneed onto the floor and rested my chin on his knees. “I got an acceptance letter to Leeds in England.” I felt as if I was experiencing cardiac arrest. Tears welled up in my eyes and the floodgates opened; suddenly we were oceans apart. “Well, what’s the matter, gorgeous? This is an awesome opportunity for me, it’s fucking Ivy League!” I tried to speak, but my words were muffled and drowned by a sea of tears as they sank into empty nothingness. The music was floating from the speakers through the air and all I could do was capture it in my ears for distraction, but the tunes flowed to the rhythm of my life. 

      Words like violence

      Break the silence

      Come crashing in

      Into my little world

      Painful to me

      Pierce right through me

      Can’t you understand

      Oh, my little girl… 

His voice chimed in as he pulled me onto his lap and held me tightly against his chest. 

      All I ever wanted

      All I ever needed

      Is here in my arms 

My heart suddenly burst into flames and was overwhelmed with burning pain and febrile shame that I had not been honest with Lloyd about my true feelings for him. “What’s so terrible?” He knew, and his words mocked and manipulated me. Volcanic pressure bubbled inside of me- instantly an explosive back-draft came screaming through my lips.

      “Because I love you, Lloyd.”

The words- a teardrop on the fire- extinguished the agony in my heart and slowed my blazing spirit.

      “I love you.”

The words- feathers on my breath- a gentle impulsion that shook me, made me lighter.

I stood up to compose myself; he followed behind and fell to his knees, his blackened eyes shot with tears. Lloyd grasped my hands with desperation as if I were leaving and spoke softly to my eyes, “Come with me. I’ll leave in a month and a half, but I’ll be back in four. When December comes around, you need to be with me. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. An’ I swear I’m gonna ask you right someday, I’m gonna ask you right. Be my wife, please, please, I want to spend my life with you.” His words punched through my heart. I pulled him off of his knees and whispered, “You will.” The speakers were still singing the sound track of my-newly-become-our life. 

      Whenever I’m alone with you

      You make me feel like I am whole again

      Whenever I’m alone with you

      You make me feel like I am home again 

After this evening, we spent our last weeks trying to arrest time: the intangible thief who would steal our moments of coexistence every time he escaped our watch. This was my first experience that forced me to realize that to compete with time is futile- I cannot capture it, freeze it, or manipulate it. Time eluded us and took my lover with him. I no longer find myself wanting to imprison time, but rather run him off and make him sprint until December when I will beg him to stand still again.

My heart feels leaden and sinks with sun every night that crawl into my bed alone. My eyelids grow heavy and as I begin to slip out of consciousness, I can feel him sliding into my dreams. I am cradled in the arms of his ghost. But as the sun comes up and burns my hallucinations away- I am birthed into the horrifying reality that he is no longer there and I must live each day on my own. The goal of being with him inspires me to hold on. I can still smell him on my fingers and taste him on my breath. Every thought races through my mind to the beat of our song. 

      However far away

      I will always love you

      However long I stay

      I will always love you

      Whatever words I say

      I will always love you

      I will always love you…