ˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩
LJ Idol week 5 prompt: inconceivable.
I never thought she'd die. How could this have happened? What god thought this was acceptable?
We were eleven years old, inseparable for a year before her bones started to rot.
It was inconceivable to watch her fade, unbelievable that as the days went by I could almost see through her. The sky reflected in her skin, gray and cold. It was winter so the clouds were spitting snow most days. And she was so cold, all of the time, and quiet too, like a winter midnight in the woods. Her fingers weren't strong enough to do anything more than scrabble at my palm when we held hands on the playground. They felt like icicles, like they might break off if I squeezed too hard.
But I squeezed her hand hard anyway, because the other kids called her "cancer girl!" in shrill voices that could break even the most healthy of hearts. She cowered in the center of their circles as they shoved her back and forth with gloved hands, until someone would come and help her escape. She would've saved herself if she had been healthy. She always had such fire in her eyes, but she had no kindling left with which to stoke it. The cancer took everything from her, even before it put her in the ground.
Sometimes death is nonsense. It's a word that doesn't make any sense, that couldn't possibly apply to your reality. Until it does. And when it does, it becomes Death with a capital D, like another person in the room. Condolences become a jumble of letters and you can't read books for days on end, which is unbearable because all you want to do is escape into someone else's world. But you can't, so you don't, and you just keep staring straight ahead, eyes on the horizon, hoping that the world will right itself again.
When she wasn't in the hospital, we spent afternoons under the Rainbow Tree telling stories and tying ribbons to the branches. When we came back later and the ribbons were still there, we'd purposely forget that we put them up and said instead that the fairies did. Those tree roots soaked up so many of our stories, I was surprised that old tree didn't die when she did. I thought the world would be marked with grief for the loss of her.
(The title is the phonetic spelling of inconceivable. This was written about a childhood friend who died of leukemia when we were eleven. If you can read my locked entries, there is a poem about her here. I hope you've found your peace Steph.)
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥
I never thought she'd die. How could this have happened? What god thought this was acceptable?
We were eleven years old, inseparable for a year before her bones started to rot.
It was inconceivable to watch her fade, unbelievable that as the days went by I could almost see through her. The sky reflected in her skin, gray and cold. It was winter so the clouds were spitting snow most days. And she was so cold, all of the time, and quiet too, like a winter midnight in the woods. Her fingers weren't strong enough to do anything more than scrabble at my palm when we held hands on the playground. They felt like icicles, like they might break off if I squeezed too hard.
But I squeezed her hand hard anyway, because the other kids called her "cancer girl!" in shrill voices that could break even the most healthy of hearts. She cowered in the center of their circles as they shoved her back and forth with gloved hands, until someone would come and help her escape. She would've saved herself if she had been healthy. She always had such fire in her eyes, but she had no kindling left with which to stoke it. The cancer took everything from her, even before it put her in the ground.
Sometimes death is nonsense. It's a word that doesn't make any sense, that couldn't possibly apply to your reality. Until it does. And when it does, it becomes Death with a capital D, like another person in the room. Condolences become a jumble of letters and you can't read books for days on end, which is unbearable because all you want to do is escape into someone else's world. But you can't, so you don't, and you just keep staring straight ahead, eyes on the horizon, hoping that the world will right itself again.
When she wasn't in the hospital, we spent afternoons under the Rainbow Tree telling stories and tying ribbons to the branches. When we came back later and the ribbons were still there, we'd purposely forget that we put them up and said instead that the fairies did. Those tree roots soaked up so many of our stories, I was surprised that old tree didn't die when she did. I thought the world would be marked with grief for the loss of her.
(The title is the phonetic spelling of inconceivable. This was written about a childhood friend who died of leukemia when we were eleven. If you can read my locked entries, there is a poem about her here. I hope you've found your peace Steph.)
♥ pacing while praying ♥ you are beautiful ♥ digging for buried crap ♥ we should all be narcissists ♥