I need a fairytale

Whispered, quieter than  the wind outside, softer than the inside of my jacket, colder than the window glass, dripping with condensation. I need a fairytale the way clouds need rain and a bath needs bubbles. The smell of insense tickling my nose makes me feel heady, like I could hallucinate a prince and a castle in front of me. I could look outside the dripping layer and see some kind of castle shimmering. I could take off this beanie and put on a tiara, I could be a princess. But that’s not the kind of fairytale I want.

I need a fairytale like the glitter in cement, the kind of fairytale where pixies ride on subways and stare at the inside of your soul from across a train. Where beautiful fairyboys walk around parks with a guitar on their back, where their eyes crash louder than the waves when you stand on the busy boardwalk, when their words spin spells stickier than the pinkest cotton candy.

Something luscious. I need something enthralling.

There was a boy in the fairy tale once. He was an angel though, maybe he should have been a hymn, not some modern day suburban folk tale. His eyelashes were like the bars of a cage and looking through them was being able to stretch to your full wingspan for the first time in your life. He was the closest thing to worship I’ve ever been.  I took photographs of him, lying on his stomach in the grass, eyes closed listening, bashful lopsided grin, and taped them to my walls. Gluing songs that reminded me of him  in my journal, I would walk down the sidewalk, the rain celebrating around me, and the pounding on the ground was like the way the drops of his eyes pounding in my mind. He made me happier than I had ever been, with the kind of exhilaration you get from escaping death in the ocean, or flying a kite. The kind that sweeps you away. But he was so sad. Those beautiful deep eyes which were the most hallucinogenic drug I had ever tried, had seen horrors.

He might have been used to fairytales, and angels showing up in your life. But I am just a mortal girl who likes to write, who likes to see pictures in smoke and songs in the wind. And for a long time I couldn’t distinguish sadness with unearthliness.

Because when his skin shimmered I saw only the touch of something inhuman. His tears were like diamonds, so precious that I couldn’t take them for what they were.

When he looked at me I felt bathed in moonlight. When he looked away I felt the eclipse of the sun. and then the nightmares came. I should have expected it. In this fairytale of pure bliss, I should have known that the bad guys would be nothing but evil. That it would hurt more. That I would have to crash further.

When I showed him my scars he stopped talking.

I would catch him, sitting where the sun’s light was softest, singing while he held his guitar in his lap. His eyes closed and he looked like a child. Like one of those baby cupids, but not nearly so wise. Those diamond moonstone tears collected in the corners of his eyes, and his arms looked so strong, but so pale. I wrote him poetry, I wrote him songs, singing them for him in the minutes where twilight turns to night and it’s easy to be honest. He would look at me and I would see devils, nights with no shame, fire and sorrow burrowed so deep inside. I had some kind of knife inside my stomach, tearing me up inside. And I would go away and tears would burn holes in the ground, pounding like the rain used to be, but not clean or rejuvenating at all. And in the morning I would go to him again, offering up my words, my scars, my fears, my dreams.

He stopped talking when I showed him my scars.

One morning he showed me his.

I felt the tears inside my stomach turn into silver, something so heavy and shiny I couldn’t stop staring but I couldn’t move either. That day I had no words. I struggled and struggled, like I had the strings of a guitar wrapped around my throat. I was a glacier who was in love with a burning ship. But the tears wouldn’t melt.

And I missed the sound of his voice. The days were so silent. The sun shone shyly through the windows, grateful for clouds when they came and protected it from shining too brightly. I learned how to speak with my eyes. I learned that not everything needed to be said. I learned how to sit and let dust fall. I thought about how I heard that dust was the ashes of dead fairies. I wanted to write fairytales with my finger along the window-ledge but there were no words. He  sat in the corner and watched the dust particles dance in the light, like shadows of the fairies they once were. I wondered what kind of nightmares he was having at night, when I would wake up sweating but couldn’t even scream. His skin was too hot to touch, and I wondered how he managed to stay in one place for so long. How this unearthly boy managed not to fly away. I wondered if I would ever sprout wings and dance higher than the falling dust, higher than the clouds covering up the sun. that’s what his eyes reminded me of; those clouds, the dust, a gray film over everything. The fog made it hard to hear the ocean crashing inside me at night. I lay still and felt no rush of feelings. The sidewalk was just cements, with a few cracks, no magical path, no powers to break my mother’s back. I have never been so terrified in my life.

Until the day I tripped over the guitar in my haze, and it clanged against the ground, echoing the sounds of my nerves. My fingers hurt, the callouses had gone away after so long without playing. I didn’t sleep for days. I forgot to eat. The sun peeked in curiously, and stars twinkled with a bright kind of assurance.

The day I took the guitar in to the room where he was sitting, staring at something my human eyes couldn’t see, was the day every scar I had reopened. I thought I would never be able to do it. Smoke got in my eyes and I choked out tears.

But his eyes were still the mind-altering eyes of an angel, no matter how many demons he had slept with.

And so I played. And played, he closed his eyes and his shoulders hunched and he winced like I was beating him with the guitar. Tears were running all the way down my arms and wrists. I tasted the metal strings in my mouth. It was like running up and down mountain after mountain, my breath was short and he was gasping. My cheeks were pink and I thought he might collapse.

When I had bled every ounce of blood inside of me, when I had cried every bit of molten silver away, when the moon and sun shone at the same time, all the corners softened. The light was eerie and I thought I could fall asleep and never wake up. I could hear the echoing hollow chamber of my throat as salt waves pounded in my temples.

When I saw his wings, I wasn’t really surprised. When the feathers reached out and touched my face, and the edges came away red, I couldn’t think of anything. Except that now he could fly and I couldn’t. and suddenly, the words were back. There were so many of them, clamoring like too many instruments in a band, like hair rising on a cat’s back, like jacaranda petals falling. But when I saw the way his arms looked, so strong, and when his eyes looked alive again after so long; fresh with longing and full of the sky, I bit my lip and kept them inside.

Thank you for your words

He said. The clouds turned inside out and I could see the silver lining. And then my angel, my sweet fairytale long-eyelashes boy who has seen more devils than any angel should, flew away.

He left me here. Like I read about the Greek gods doing, back when everything was wrapped in pure white sheets. He swooped down and made me love him. But he couldn’t stay away from the sky and the feel of the wind against his chest. Waves crash. Flowers wither. I have less nightmares than I did before. There are many nights when I can’t sleep at all. But I have the words back. Sometimes they are worse than any scar I have, written in red across my arm. Sometimes they make me feel immortal.

Almost like I am part of a fairytale.