L'appel du Vide

     The landscape was vivid with every color. Wintergreen trees littered the landscape along with batches of vibrant flowers. There were a series of clover green hills and sky blue lakes, their mirage seemed to look like the footstep of a celestial being. The mountain I was driving on perched on the top of everything else, everything except for the feeble rays of sunlight seeping through the clouds. Hurling over an enveloping river watching all these beautiful sceneries, and my first thought wasn't "Wow, I should drive here more often," or even "Wow, I should take a picture of this view." It was "Wow, I wonder if I took a sharp turn to the right whether I could bust the bars and fly into the water." And I don't know why.
     I'm not really sure where the line between curious and destructive belongs for me. I mean I obviously trying to really, die, I didn't want to, I was unfulfilled or anything. But then again, I wasn't totally fulfilled either. I was just searching for something else, something more. I don't know how to swim. But I figure if I did fall off I'm floating a million miles above the Earth and I couldn't drown. If the son of God could walk on water then I swear I could make the water walk on me. Or maybe, I'd just drown, failing to see the difference between living and drowning, because I'm running at a wall hoping that its the finish line, or just sitting dead, on the bottom of this river.
     Dead, it's always kind of been a weird thing. My parents would always talk to me about loving myself and not dying but its kind of odd. It's not like as a 10 year old I was handed candy or the noose of a rope and asked to choose. Wherever I go I would always see starting with “life is a...” and ending with whatever optimistic saying ran through the minds of advertisers as they were daydreaming in the shower. But none of those sayings seemed fit now.
     It's a train that you keep riding because it seems no other destination that you see is good enough to stop at. A bubble too small to care for but long enough you can't just pop. A car ride that you makes you wonder about jumping off into the river.
     I wasn't suicidal. I was just self destructive. After all it feels like every year I'm just looking up at some perverted Christmas lights, getting dimmer by the second. I'm watching the world spin around and wondering why my broken two legs can't move me faster. So when I'm listening to the river, to the call of the void, I amn't trying to die. I'm trying to see how well I can live. Because everywhere I've been, every trip I've taken, I've never found a good enough place to stop. And I don't know if I ever will.

There is a Light that Never Goes Out

Laying on my back I melted my gaze into the starry night, straying long enough that there was a blend between the contrast of the stars and the sky. My cheeks became crimson from the feverish events on the balmy night before me, with the concrete cooling against my skin. Muffles arouse from the tunnel behind me, and craning my neck back to glimpse the mystery man conversing with my best friend, Nicole, I found myself staring at the most gorgeous being. He was sitting at the top of a statue at the plaza, deserted from any audience

As he found my gaze I began to incoherently blush, my cheeks turning rosier as he began to stroll my way. While straining my eyes to get a better look at him through the dark tunnel, I didn't realize it when he was leaning over me.

I began to recognize him a little better, he was the man whom I was singing at the karaoke machine with. Earlier that day. The name of the song was slipping away from my tongue, but I knew that it was a soft melody, something like I’m With You or You’re So Vain or maybe even Leaving On A Jet Plane, I can't be sure.

I had only met him that night, but he said it as if I should’ve known it was him. As if I’d known him forever. And once we started talking, I felt like we really had.

My hands started shaking, instinctively wanting to get near him. A first hint of an infinitely deep longing to be with him. To be the one I see by my side when all of my dreams come true. His aroma hovered over my face, intoxicating me. The first taste of a smell that would taunt me in the months to come. His deep voice echoed in the small space, the lavish chords of his words gliding over my skin. The first notes started a melody I would soon come to seek out, to harmonize with.

When we met that night, we did not touch. We did not exchange numbers or expect to meet again. Neither of us had the faintest inkling that the fleeting moment in that tunnel would set off a chain of events, which would both smash and soothe our souls. That it would take the entire summer to weave our lives together. And that when we did, we would glow. That we would challenge our boundaries, dancing around the things we had thought impossible, soaring to places we’d never before imagined.

I ran away that night with a bus to catch at 6am, like Cinderella returning from the haze that comes with those nights you wish could go on forever, filled with timeless moments that seemed to last longer than it was. But the tunnel had been the enough to seal it all. Though I didn’t know it yet, he had already sunk down beneath my surface. A bond had been corded between us. We didn’t know each others numbers, addresses, names, no formal connections. But we had a spark. And after that night, with all my heart, I guarded it with my heart, shielding it from the wind, cold and anything else that could come between us. To extinguish our irreplaceable fire. There was a spark that will never go out.