Conditional Love
She stood at the rivers edge, the gentle current teasing her toes, inviting them to play.
Eyes shut, oblivious to the night around her, only aware of the warm summer wind that ran through her bouffant curly hair. She seemed serene; a perfect painting- inky sky, a crescent moon, the shadows of coconut trees and a large swallowing sea.
Contradiction: Pain seared, ricocheting in her skull, banging on every corner for sweet release. She wanted to explode… to bleed. And her heart…oh, her heart! It swelled to the point that she became painfully aware of it thudding in her chest, somewhere near her throat.
Although it seemed that she didn’t have the capacity to carry on any more- she did; a trail of tears falling down her cheeks like the rain.
She took a step forward, water wetting the base of her feet and thought unconsciously for the last time.
“…Oh Angela…I never knew these feeling existed. As though it was buried and waiting to be excavated…it’s indescribable, it’s perfect…”
The Boy turned toward Angela as they lay together in bed, fingers entwined. She was staring at the ceiling at the fan moving too fast to distinguish the blades. He kissed her forehead.
She smiled and said with a forced will, “I love you”
“And I, you”
That night they seemed to have become lovers from a very stable friendship. No building up of feelings, just a sudden switch. One evening they never thought of holding hands, the next Angela was climbing into his bedroom in the dead of the night, doing things that a 15 year old friendship would never call for.
But he didn’t know how she really felt; neither did he know the reason behind her doings. He didn’t know that she visited the tarot card reader that morning and believed the prediction of his sudden death with all her heart and most of all he didn’t know she was only doing this because of her guilt and that he was the only friend she ever had and not because she loved him. He didn’t know that in the darkness as he held her, she was silently weeping. He didn’t know much, and she knew a little.
She took another step into the water, she was now ankle deep and let a thought that she had been blocking for a long time sweep into her mind. She realized that she didn’t have to do it; her heart and spirit were screaming a defiant ‘NO’ that night when it all began. She didn’t love him, she wasn’t attracted to him. She just wanted to do a dying friend- her only friend- a final favor: to let him experience love and all it’s add-ons.
She touched her swollen belly with her blood stained hands and took a deep breath and convinced herself for the last time that she had to do it… he didn’t die as predicted and she was suffering pretending to love him, living with the burden that an unloved child from an unloved man dwell within her…
He was going to die anyway. She just took some work of destiny’s hands…nothing wrong with that.
She swept hair off her face, leaving her forehead blood-stained. She was right in what she did…yet the pain still ebbed in her head and soul.
She had to end it. She took another step in the water…and another… and another… and another…
She knelt down in the murky water; put her hands on the riverbed, letting the blood smudge off her palms.
One last breath in.
She put her head in the water and finally lay her body down.
One last breath out.
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