Something blue
Originally submitted as a written assignment for ENG 205: Introduction to Creative Writing: Fiction with Professor Micheal Cohen at the American University in Bulgaria.
Her hands are cold. Her freezing fingers fondle his cheeks, chin, and neck. Something in his chest is pounding so loudly, that he’s not even sure it belongs to him.
“It’s been blue.”
He sees smoke coming out of his mouth.
“What has?”
He looks into her eyes as they sparkle in the dark like dots of flames. Her breath is warm. Her kisses, too. Something was burning between her lips, so powerfully his mind melts before he can make sense of it.
He gently shakes his head. Just everything, Medley. Without you.
They stay silent. Now her hands are on his back, under his shirt, strolling along his spine. Is he chilled to the bone or is he on fire? Is his flesh being cut, or has he already been torn apart?
“Why couldn’t you stay, Med?”
More smoke. Her eyes are even brighter; they are all that he can look at, but not through. He can’t see. His eye rims are windowsills where raindrops linger until they overflow. Once they do, the smoke is gone. Spring paints streaks of sunlight on his bedsheets. The sky is blue, like how it has been since then.
He looks to the window where the warmth comes from. He sees flowers out there, blooming in colors. There are more colors than blue, he knows, but Med was blue when she held his hands. It took all the strength she had left to squeeze them before the ventilator stopped beeping. Then a long, high-pitched sound. Her life was a flat line, and since then, his was, too.
He turns his back to the sun as he embraces the blanket on the empty side of the bed. He closes his eyes until he can see again. Her hands. The cold. The heat. And something blue.