There was a bench resting amidst concrete paths and grey
grass. It was fashioned from wood and was gleaming nearly white in the sun. A
boy and girl sat here, with the wood lying hard and uncomfortable under them.
Colourless flowers bloomed all around while the sun cast shadows of stem and
leaf below. Between them lay a foot of distance. They hadn’t spoken for
sometime but it had not yet grown awkward. The boy shuffled to his right closer
to the girl until his leg brushed up against hers with a faint rub of denim on
denim. He looked at her. Her face stared back at him but her face was only half
there, it was somehow misted through the clear air. The curls of hair fell all
around her shoulders and down to a glimpse of cleavage above a patterned
top. Her eyes were old and deep set, her
nose small and slight perched atop pursed lips and a rounded chin. The rest of
her face could have been anyone’s but he was unnerved. He leaned in, his lips
took hers as they kissed and a bitter taste filled his mouth like lemon juice.
The citric acid swirled to the back of his mouth and he swallowed before
pulling away slowly. Was it then that her head came to rest on his hard bony
shoulder padded only by her curling locks of hair? The boy tried to remember
where he had been and what he had done before coming to sit here in this
courtyard but it was impossible to recount. He felt as if he knew all that had
come before this, like it was story he had told before. He gave up, and let his
head fall back as he closed his eyes. Now there was nothing, just a white glare
from the sunlight that pored through his thin closed eyelids.
“I wish it could stay like this forever” he heard himself
say, but there was no response from the girl. He opened his eyes but the white
canvass remained there until a dark black speck broke it. The dot grew closer
and closer still until it turned into a bird. It flew back and forth over and
over again; it flew past a hundred times all at once before resting on the grass where it
prodded at the turf. A tune began to echo in his ear as the girl hummed and the
bird suddenly turned to stare at him, motionless. It opened its mouth and began
to sing but this was no bird song, it sang in a human voice and he listened
closely, was it telling him something? He struggled to make out the words and
the harder he tried the quieter the birds song became, until it shouted at him.
“You’ve gotta make your own kind of music.” The bird called.
Then his eyes opened and he shuddered. He was looking at
green flimsy walls that rose to a point above him, they fluttered in the wind.
For the first time in his life he felt lost. The song the bird had sang continued
on his phone as his alarm sounded. He found the phone under his pillow and
clumsily hit ‘snooze’ with his thumb’s third attempt. The song stopped and
silence fell upon him like a veil. He thought about the dream before it
vanished and he remembered how the day had truly been. At the time he had never been happier but that day and that girl were now gone. The only time he
ever came close to seeing her again and to feeling what he had felt were in the
dreams he had at night and they never did it justice. Something was always
slightly wrong and she never said the things she had said. In his dream she
never told him that she wished it could stay like that forever too. She never
kissed him the way she had and she never tasted sweet from the balm on her
lips.
He sat back and thought.
Was it all just a promise that I had wanted? Was it only
ever some hopes and desires we shared? Was it special?
There was a truth deep down that he always wanted to hide
from. He interrupted himself when he was on the brink of it, just so he could
never fully accept it. But this morning while he stared up at the green he let
his guard down and the truths flowed over him in a flood. He had been too
lonely and had tried to create this thing out of nothing but dust. He stopped
being himself. Surely that isn’t how it should be. That had been two years ago,
before he had asked her to come with him. He rose from his makeshift bed,
climbed into a pair of tattered jeans and slipped the phone into his pocket. As
he pulled open the door of the tent a shaft of light pierced his eyes like a
church spire. When his eyes adjusted the lake stood before him, vast and calm,
glittering in the morning light. The last traces of the night’s fog settled
around the base of the island in the centre with the ruins of the building
rising above into the blue.
Then, in his pocket, the alarm sounded again.
“You’ve gotta make your own kind of music.” A voice told
him.
