hand in hand we stalked the savage gardens of the vast park we had come to love. the outposts of our bodies had become decorated in ritualized coffee containers, little trinkets to show where we had been on our way to this beautiful array of the outdoors caged in. smiling, in summer shades of red, we exchanged simple looks like embarassed school children. the sky was incredibly empty, slightly over cast and void of the pearly tufts of angel white. this was the essence of what fall should be, every time you walk out into the brisk air that signals that the haze of a scorching summer is now dead.
all hail the dying trees and their pyrotechnic leaves, blanketing the earth in shades of hell fire.
our shoes crunched over loose gravel, then dry grass and finally, over those terrific bled out leaves that fell at five centimeters per second. the day was a wednesday, one of only times i ever skipped school just for show. her face was cloaked behind her auburn hair, like the curtain around a hospital bed, shielding the injuried from further bodily damage. she turned, throwing back the protective covering and looked me dead in the eye and asked, "is this all a dream?". i couldn't help but laugh at her vague question, that was something i never got used to, those randomly shot vague questions.
we had reached the covered bench in the japanese garden, our little hide away from the mass of ignorance in the world. i was still pondering that question of her's, i wasn't sure what it was she meant by it, so i took a stab in the dark and said, "i'm not sure what you mean. is 'what' all a dream?". it was now that the intensity of her eyes finally hit me like a mack truck. those crystal blue, almost violet, eyes that turned my skin hot and shook my soul, were now halo'd in blood shot misery. those eyes still haunt me, gazing at me like two bleeding ghosts glowing in tones of oceans and space gas.
"all of this! the two of us sitting in the park alone, the gypsy grey skies, the stillness of fall breathing in shallow fashion like it has punctured lungs...is all of this a dream?" she said, her voice full of all the crisp majesty in the universe. my heart began to shut down, similar to a steam-engine running out of coal, because i knew what was going on. i had seen the signs so many times but i didn't want to acknowledge them. i didn't want reality to sink in and murder this gorgeous fantasy that was being built up inside our heads. my chest was caving in and i knew it was only going to get worse: not for me but for her.
sadly i responded to her, "this is no dream, we are here in the murky autumn park you see, sweetheart. we sit under the pewter sky with delicious smell of the dying world and the undertone of pumpkin spice, we are surely here." her violet blue eyes blinked, became less red and her smile relaxed to coat her teeth with her lips. she was content, so much so that her head came to rest on my shoulder and her hand on my hand. there we sat, silently admiring the world and the emptiness there within the confines of the caged park we come to love. it would be one of the last times we would meet there, inside the covered bench of the japanese garden.
the delusions of love mixed with the hatred and misanthropy, absorbed by her ghost, bent her mind and soul too far backwards. all of this was sending her into a spiral so terrible that only a stomach filled with gin and seroquel could erase the pain she now bottled inside her delicate frame. her last words, drowsily etched into her bed side table, were these:
"empaths and homunculi don't mix, just ask romeo and juliet."
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