Innocence Cold, S. G. Ricketts [read e book .txt] 📗

I can see you, walking away from me in the rain. There is an invisible thread, silvery in its innocence, tying our souls together. And I watch you walk away in the rain. In this storm, you fade into the gray.
You are my innocence. You are my years of naivete. You are my child’s heart. You walk away from me, but your shadow dances, splashing in the puddles and spinning on the rain drops. You can’t look back. You are leaving me behind.

Or am I leaving you?

The store fronts’ glass windows are blank, empty eyes watching our good-byes. You are full of light, a spot of sunshine in a tide of blue depravity. I catch a glimpse of myself in the window and can’t help but feel confused. You are me. But there is no light in me now. You have left me, and you took my light with you. My eyes are empty, my step is heavy. Years of pain have weighed me down. The thread between our hearts stretches thinner and impulsively I grab at it.
Silk slips through my fingers and I’m plunged into memories. Memories of before. Memories of innocent purity. I watch myself as I play with my sister, my younger self bumbling and twirling in a pink tutu. Light shines from all around me. I can see it, untainted. It is a halo around my blonde head. It is in the twinkle of my eyes. It is in the curve of my arm as I spin crazily around, twirling with my best friend. It bubbles out in our laughs, in our shrieks of joy. My little girl self looks up and smiles.

The image changes with the dizzying intensity of a child’s mind, and I’m a little older now. My tears fall on silent rocks. An angry fist grinds rocks to powder. There is no one near me and the only sounds are their mocking laughter. I can feel my little girl pain, bleeding from a lonely heart. Another tear slips off my cheek, and my light dims. It lands on the dusty uniform, my plaid brand of shame. The scene changes again, spinning out to the jeers of my peers.

I’m taller here. Oak trees shade the field. My innocence is still duller, but amidst the crowd of girls mine is the brightest. The most naive of the group, I can almost taste my desire to believe the best. My downfall. I see myself rescue a friend, her forehead branded with childish oblivion and her round face crushed. I watch myself be pelted with rocks, and my heart lurches as I watch my younger self die. The innocence fades just a little more as my child’s heart bears the bruising of a friend. And the thread stretches ever more.

In my mind, I can feel the thread pulled almost too thin to feel. The silk burns my palm as it rips away. Desperately, I fling myself into memory after memory. Desperate not to lose this innocence. Desperate not to lose you, my heart. Desperate to find myself once more. My soul is bleached as I watch an almost-grown me battle through years of scorn. Battle through the illusions of love. Battle through guilt, and shame, and the reality of life. My dead heart cries out as I watch myself carve angry lines across an alabaster wrist. My soul screams as I watch myself running. Running, always running. The pain of my innocence hits me, as I watch it bleed slowly out, as I watch time and again my heart break. The innocence is leaving me so quickly now. My young eyes are open now, and I wish I could close them. I watch my younger self, beaten, bruised, bashed into the ground.

And my last memory burns me. My heart has grown cold within me. My eyes held the last of my light. The last of my innocence. The last of my childhood. They hold the last hope of life. My last hope of love. Of freedom from this pain. And now they are cold. I am left looking at a reflection. Made up to please the world, made up to feel no world. Eyes dead to the surroundings, heart still within my chest. The chord burns in my hand as the stretching picks up speed. I look away from the window, and my innocent self looks back. Just once, I see her look back.

The thread snaps, and a tear rolls slowly down my face. My pain is soundless; my heart beats once and lies still once more. My innocence is gone. My childhood has left. I am alone once more.
But in my hand, where the thread had run, a child’s ribbon sits. White with purity. Do I need to be cold?

Publication Date: 03-05-2011

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