My alarm blares and flings me out of the dream I’m already starting to forget, wisps of false memories slipping between my grasping fingers and dissolving into oblivion. I’m in bed, same as any other morning, veiled in darkness while my eyes adjust to their surroundings. The red light of the digital clock on my nightstand buzzes at the edge of my vision, but I resist looking at it. I fear that if I do, I’ll have to accept that time is a force I’m subject to. I weakly pull the comforter over my head and curl into a ball. Just one or two more minutes, that’s all I need. The day ahead is sure to be filled with nothing but stress; don’t I deserve to be free of burden and worry, even if only for a moment?
–BZZZZZT–
With a jolt, my phone shatters my cocoon. I try to resist it as much as I can, but the device has an unspeakable power over me and succeeds where the clock failed. Who am I kidding anyway? I’m fated to be a creature of this world, and there’s no escaping fate. Just one notification will see to that. Begrudgingly I reach for that omnipresent companion next to my pillow and squint at the blue light piercing the darkness. There at the top of my long list of notifications is my new tether to this plane of existence. A message.
“Hey, we need to talk. Are you free later today?”
My heart knocks violently against my chest and a hollow pit forms in my stomach that might turn me inside out and swallow me whole. How dare he say something now, after nearly a year of nothing? He’s the one who felt I was holding him back, that we were growing differently. And of course I let him go. What else was I supposed to do? At the time I thought, you know what, maybe he’s right. Maybe I was too much, too fast for him. I was a blaze furiously roaring into his quiet life, my sweet-smelling smoke slowly suffocating him. He couldn’t hold my smoldering heart.
I’d tell myself on sleepless nights that this is just how it goes, that there’s no point in dwelling on our past. Let that good thing die, I’d recite over and over. But now here he is, desecrating the grave I’d made for us and scattering the loose bones over the dirt. And he’s out west, so what’s he doing texting me at this time? Maybe he’s drunk? He always was the emotional type. Could hold his liquor like nobody’s business, but his tears? Forget it. I chuckle a bit at the absurdity of the situation.
Daylight is starting to creep through the gaps of my curtains. Lady Time is waiting and I must pay her my dues soon, but the pixels on my screen keep me in place. What do I say? I throw the comforter off of me and sit up cradling the phone. “Hey, it’s been a while, crocodile.” Corny. We haven’t spoken in months. We’re not friends. Delete, delete, delete. “Hey, good to hear from you. I should be free sometime this afternoon.” There, cordial and straight to the point. My thumb hovers over that little blue icon that will zap my message across space.
I grimace and throw my phone to the other side of the bed. My text goes unsent. Why do I even need to make myself available to him, that selfish prick? Why do I care so much? Did he care at all? Maybe I should ignore his ass, see how that makes him feel. I drop my head into my hands as a myriad thoughts fire at once, my brain on the verge of combusting that cool spring morning.
I couldn’t hold him down. I was a burden, surplus cargo thrown overboard so the ship can stay afloat. And I released him. Like a songbird nursed back to health from a broken wing, I set him free to soar. They always say that people will enter your life at one point and leave at another and you have to be the bigger person and let them. But no one talks about when they suddenly force their way back in. What are you supposed to do then?
–BZZZZZT–
Another jolt launches me out of my whirlpool of thoughts. I lunge at the phone, fumbling with my passcode to see the new message. Maybe he’ll finally explain himself. Maybe he realizes he messed up and wants to start over. Maybe we still a chance. Maybe–
“Aaah my bad, wrong person lol. Hope you’ve been alright.”
Reaching arms of white light are pushing past the curtains now. I set my phone to the side and watch the light slowly fill the room.