She always wore a yellow cardigan.

It wasn't anything special. A little ratty, to be honest; the threads frayed at the end and the pattern was a mess, with sleeves licking wavy lines that sputtered across the torso. I had told her more than once it resembled one of those cheap heart monitors in the local clinic of our tiny town, of plastic and murky mercury. Spike, spike, drop, drop, drop-

"Them fancy machines in the big city ain't for the like of our folk until we get injured bad," I said.

And that was that.

. . .The color was more of a pale white than yellow.

It started off yellow. A bright, vibrant thing, it was, like it had the sun in its seams.

It wasn't anything special, but you loved it.

It tore and you cried.

I loved you too.

---

Looking back, you were odd. Or our classmates thought so, at least. You were kind, generous. Always smiling until your cheeks ached, laughing until your stomach gurgled. Loud, open, warm. It didn't matter if it was the gay kid or the bully kid. The tall or the short. The fat or the lean.

It didn't matter a wit to you, not with the bubbling sunshine under your pale skin.

You were alive in ways the rest of us weren't.

I guess it only makes sense that you were dead in ways we weren't either.

---

You always smelled of smoke.

A flash of faded yellow and the lingering ash of cigs. That was my memory of you before I came to know you, came to love you. It didn't change any after I did either.

I think a part of me resents that, resents you.

As much as you were open, you were equally closed off. You didn't think you were important, didn't think you had any worth when you were the only worthy thing to me. You couldn't stand people worrying over you because of it.

And for all that you were warm, you were the sun, and whoever got too close could only be burned. If it were only that, I would have done it, but you liked to burn yourself in the process too.

Damn you.

A part of me resents that, resents you. I know it to be true.

But the only one I hate, I think, has been myself all along.

---

You'll never guess it. Like, really, I doubt you will.

No, you never will. You never had a chance to.

Humor me?

I tried listening, you see. What you said to me back in the day, about learning properly and fixing my stubborn tongue. To use my brain for a change. To get out of this dreadful town, with scores of gangs like swarms. I even tried that poetry you like. My mind likes to rhyme on its own now, singing in tune. . .

Fuck. I can't do it. Not like you.

Please come back.

Please.

---

The sirens wailed and for once, I was sick. I'm uncertain what it was about that day, how I knew, to be frank with you. Ambulances were common and so were the injured. They were a natural pair, a two-of-a-kind slick.

You didn't live long here without seeing the combination paired.

Regardless, I threw my bags to the side and sprinted to the door. I doubt the teacher cared; no one cared about anyone in that place except you. And except me, I suppose, but that was only for you.

My heart seized in my chest as I lost sight of the ambulance.

Two was a pair, three was a flop.

---

“How do you feel?”

I echoed the question back, a mere twist of a word, entirely spent. How should I feel? Betrayed? Broken? Dead in all but name? I was those, but ‘feel’ sung a tune of short. More than a feeling, it was a state of being. More than an emotion, it was my ocean.

I was drowning fast, I idly noted.

A weepy snowman, flowing into the ocean, until it couldn’t pretend to be anything more than misery.

You had left. What else was I supposed to do?

The lady in front echoed me then, lazy and sloppy. A mandatory appointment, so hence did the devil with a flickering halo sing, her notes shallow and slack. Better than the rest, but damning in indifference, in her lack of care. She lacked magma for hair and horns to bear.

But she killed more than any butcher, that was for sure. 

I echoed right on back.

It was a cacophony of bats, an echolocation that could never come back because neither of us cared to see, not really, and I came to the abrupt realization that nothing lasts.

---

I once asked you why you always wore that same old cardigan.

You... didn't reply. It was a first. No matter how insensitive or insecure my questions had been before, you never failed to answer. Even if it was a simple 'no'. You had my respect for that, that confidence of yours.

You didn't look it, but you had an odd sort of pride about you.

Taken aback, I laughed it off and you laughed too.

It was shaky, a far cry from the well-spoken girl I knew. It made my instincts twitch and my worries rise, but my face was placid and smooth. I had learned from the best, after all. Silently, I knew something was wrong and I knew that there was nothing I could do.

Not as long as that cardigan was draped around you.

I knew, I know, I knew.

You've told me before that I'm not stupid, just a lack of care atrophying muscles and neurons alike, and a clog up from those drugs that I like. I quit those, went cold turkey, you know, although you never will, my dear. It just can't be so.

Still, I digress; lactic acid melts away muscle and reforges it in its place, forming something anew. And when it came to you, I could do anything. Be anything.

Except, of course, be something that could save you.

I was smart, you'd told me that.

I wasn't blind either.

Bruises that peeked out of frayed hems, blossoming against pale skin. Burns that puckered against your skin when you bent. A nest of broken bones shattered and deformed, each signed with a large welt. Your nose was crooked, healing as wrong as it did.

You never did like that about yourself, fretting over it in the shadowed corners of rooms.

. . .Even if I said anything, to you, to the authorities, nothing would change, would it?

After all, your parents were to blame. You'd take their side no matter what and they were too powerful, too high to fall. If I tried, you'd burn yourself inside. You'd simmer outside, crying out against the world, and me, for breaking our little fantasy. Everything would shatter, everything would break. . .

What I didn't know was that it was already broken.

I resent that, resent you.

I hate myself.

---

Your hospital room stunk of antiseptic.

Your urn didn't, I'm not sure why I thought it would.

Perhaps I thought it was the smell that infected you, that made both your body and spirit give. You slit your wrist, but it wasn't deep. It was amateur, shallow. You hadn't even taken pills to swallow. Yet, pained and small, you laid in your cardigan, dead to us all. It had to be the smell, if it wasn't then—

How else could you look so happy? Relieved?

Damn you.

Damn you.

Damn you.

How could you leave me alone?

. . .I took all the ashes. Your parents didn't care, the bastards. They didn't even let you be buried whole. I'm surprised they paid for the cremation at all, and didn't leave you to the wolves. But I didn't argue with burning you. You would've liked it, burning away all that made you impure. Your scars, your burns, the scabs beneath the skin.

You were the only perfect thing to me, how could you think about yourself so?

Mostly, you would have liked that you were free, I think, as I threw your ashes in the sea.

I stared out at the setting sun, a bloody rose in full bloom, and it wasn't anything special.

It fell beneath the horizon and I cried.

I love you.

 

 

-.___________________~xXx~_

"Goodbye, Rosalie."