The water twirls and dances it’s fluidly dance and time slows and shifts. I could stand here forever staring into this liquid abyss but I know it’s not possible. So I’m gonna stand here as long as I can. Is this what hell is like? Staring into a never ending thing with no conclusion no satisfaction your soul never at rest. Never being able to fully catch your breath. Nothing completely there. Just staring and staring no goals and no resolutions. No nothing. Just water. Running running water getting louder louder rushing forward and back, you don’t know which. Hell can be a lot of things I think. I think people can create their own personal hells just by the choices they make or maybe by pure accident. Maybe you can just stumble into a hell like I have now. A side hell though. A pedestrian street off of the main hell road. A hell of just thinking and watching and waiting and thinking with no end in sight… just thinking. And you don’t know where to go or how to look up you’re just thinking with no beginning or end. Just numbness with no rest and no ability not to think. Just thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking and–
“Jesse!” I gasp and look up. It’s an effort to lift my head, withering the hands that erected from hell to drag me into the fiery water. I was so intranced that I hadn’t even noticed I had slithered halfway over the railing. I fall back onto the metal bridge and my head goes thunk! And I notice that the sky, that was light blue when I last looked, turn into a rainbow of pink then lighter blue then dark blue and I think just a smear of yellow somewhere too. Just a last minute change God decided to make. I close my eyes against the dizziness and smile.
“Hi, Sara.” I hear her sigh and grin ever wider.
“Stop that smiling.” I don’t stop that smiling.
I open my eyes to see her head sink to her chest. I lift it. I lift it to where it should be. Where the light hits it just right because Sara Maison’s head should never lay upon her chest in the shadow. But should only be propped just enough to be dark in the right spots making it soft.
She sighs, “Why should I care about someone who doesn’t even care about themselves?”
I sit up. “Because I need you.” I say urgently. “Because… Well, just because.”
We stare. And stare and stare. And stare for a while like that. Me back on my elbows trying not to look helpless and her smiling slightly, shaking her head slightly. I would be concerned at a swaying of her head such as this if it wasn’t accompanied with a smile. But it still unnerves me.
“I’m sorry.” I say. And then a brief pause as I lick my lips, my eyes wide. “Sara?”
She leans into my face, staring. Her face blurs and smudges into something unreadable and I panic because no not Sara Maison! She can’t leave me too. She leans back into sight again and whispers to me. Sweetly and softly. But I cannot hear over the sweet softness.
“Jesse?” She says louder and the sweetness and softness is replace with something that tastes like concern when it trickles from my brain into my throat. While the rainbow trickles from my brain into my spine. Merging colors and heightening senses. I can smell the moon and the stars and they smell like metal dust. Like the silver bones of silver angels.
“Jesse, I’m going to ask you one more time what you’re on.”
My head falls toward her so naturally that I almost think it wasn’t me who moved it but God, “Okay, go ahead ask.”
“Clever. What are you on?” She’s using her stern voice which only makes me laugh.
“I’m on the rainbows and bees.” I smile briefly and let my face soak up what’s left of the sun. “I’m on acid, Sara.” I declare.
She sighs defeatedly and scoots herself up onto the rails of the bridge while her eyes extend to the tops of the trees, isn’t it funny how our eyes can go where we cannot, and places herself into some painting of some perfect wonderful day. My perfect wonderful day. Because no matter what happened in the past twenty-four hours I got Sara, sitting there with her fist under her chin like The Thinker, and she’s got me.
I take her hand and pull. Pull, pull that painting apart until Sara is sitting next to me in some other painting of some other perfect day. She takes one of my hands in both of hers and we watch the sun go down over our town. Right here and right now is our place, and there ain’t no one gonna take it from us.