Page 53 of Reckless Roses
21
ELENA
“LOVE LETTER FROM THE SEA TO THE SHORE” – DELANEY BAILEY
TWO WEEKS AFTER
“Mi corazón.”My father’s soft hand rubs my back, pulling me from my haze. “How are you feeling today?”
I can’t feel anything at all. I can’t feel how hollow my stomach is, let alone the gaping hole in my chest where my heart used to be. It’s as if I’ve been drowning in my own blood for days on end, but it just won’t kill me.
Drowning. Killing. Death.
I almost want to laugh at the metaphors I can’t stop voicing in my head. I guess as a writer, my mind works in comparisons, ways to describe life as something more beautiful. The Earth, the sun, the stars, and the sea.
Until metaphors aren’t metaphors anymore, and everything turns dark.
“I’m okay,” I murmur. There’s no point in explaining these thoughts; he wouldn’t understand them anyway.
Nobody really understands my mind to begin with, and with the secrets I’m harboring now, they never will. Explaining this void I exist within would only serve to concern my parents.They’d try to fix me, and I’m past being fixed. I’m so broken, I’ve been ground to dust on the wind—scattered across the sky, never to be recovered.
“Do you want to go for a walk?” he asks quietly.
“No, I’m tired.”
“You haven’t gotten out of bed in days.” Leo’s voice comes from slightly farther away. “The funeral is tomorrow. You’ll at least go to that, right?”
I don’t respond. Words like funeral insist there is something to mourn, something to miss. I don’t deserve either of those things.
Silence stretches on before my brother sighs.
I know I’m disappointing them. I know they’re hurting too, but they’re still getting up every day to take care of the Hayes family, to plan and prepare for what comes next. For all the destruction I’ve caused, I should be helping too, but it’s not often monsters are invited to the cleanup in the wake of their wreckage.
“August stopped by. He’s downstairs. He’d like to talk to you, if you’re okay with that.”
The faintest spark of feeling ignites from whatever shards of my being stayed behind after I walked into that emergency room—rage and regret, despair and guilt and betrayal.
We don’t say his name, not once since we left the hospital that day.
Thefamily.Thefuneral.Theremains.
But never his name. It’s supposed to be too painful, but all I feel is numb.
The sound of a summer month is what tears across my flesh like a flaming knife. It’sthatname finally giving me the sensation of choking on my own blood as it pools in my throat.
“No.” The word tears from my lips—broken and raw, full of emotion I can’t seem to feel over anything else.
Andthatis why I won’t see him, won’t speak of him or to him, won’t allow myself to think about him or consider his name. Zach is fucking dead, and I feel nothing. That hole is like a chamber inside my chest, echoing our final words.
And. I. Feel. Nothing.
It’s Zach’s brother who’s like gauze to the open wound inside my soul. I know he’d hear me, see me. He wouldn’t let me become consumed by this guilt alone. He’d share this grief and this fear. He’d forgive me. He’d still love me, despite it all.
And I don’t deserve that.
This guilt isn’t his to forgive, and it’s solely mine to hold.
I deserve nothing.
