Melancholy


The grass was wet and soft between my toes. They left shiny streaks against my foot as I bolted across the backyard. Once when I was five, one of my goldfish died, so I buried it under the rows of pine trees we had against our fence. I kept it in a Flintstones chewable vitamin box; the kind that you eat when you’re a little kid that you wish didn’t taste so crumbly and chalky in your mouth. My dad and I dug up a hole under the row of pine trees and set the Flintstones chewable vitamin box into the fresh Earth.
When I got to the fence, I grasped onto the wood to hoist myself up. I hung precariously over, trying to get a better look at the horizon. The sky was an eerie radioactive pink, the sun the focal point of the universal vortex, slipping away from view. I knew something was wrong. The air felt heavy and unnatural, the birds were quiet. I had told my sister to stay in the kitchen and I brought Macy into the garage to calm her nerves. She wouldn’t stop whining.
Something small and warm fell onto my shoulder. It bounced down and rolled into the grass, pulsating heat like a tiny ember. I jumped down and grabbed it before it could disappear. I held it cupped in my palms, its heat radiating against my face. I watched it turn a hot yellow, then a soft orange, cotton pink and sandy red, rotating between shades before finally crumbling into ash between my fingers. Soon enough, more started to trickle from the sky, almost like a darkened hailstorm creeping upon us. I stood in the middle of my yard watching these pieces collapse around me, some bigger pieces breaking into little ones before dusting against my face. The radioactive pink sky faded into an ultraviolet purple, and I felt something form in my throat. Was this fear? Was this an instinct? Did somewhere, somehow, in my being know what was coming?
Before I moved back home, we rented out that studio apartment together in downtown Seattle. Us living together happened organically, like a tree growing or the snowflakes forming. You always kept tabs on when to take the trash out while I always made time for us to go out for dinners or movies. We were both busy with our jobs, but it was nice to have someone to come home to. It was a happy time for me.
I looked back at the house and I saw it filtered rose from the sky. My sister was in the kitchen. My dog was in the garage. My parents had gone out earlier this morning but haven’t been back yet. This house is, give or take, 20 years old. I felt like I had to remember these solid facts, they were so important in this moment. All the while, the hail (if you could even call it that) fell around me, some of them lacing my hair as they dissolved in transit, others touching me with their heat before crumbling into dust at my feet.
When I realized that it was over, that too happened organically. I woke up one day and I brushed my teeth. I ate my breakfast and went to work. I knew I felt different but I didn’t know why. I didn’t want to see you or be around you. I didn’t care to see you at home when I got there. I kept asking myself if this happened slowly, creeping up like a sickness until you were finally too terminal to save anything. Or if sometimes you wake up one day and you’re just a different person ready to live a different life like a butterfly out of a cocoon. All day I wondered if this is what it felt like when a tree dies or when a snowflake melts or when a star implodes. If they were even aware of their existence until one day their cores are too hot or their limbs are too weak and thousands of little stars and trees were only aware that they were here with us in the moment of their deaths.
I finally found the strength to walk. First the right, then the left, then one after the other. My feet were now blackened with the dust of what I felt were a thousand little stars or even one big star falling around me. I walked towards the glass door and slid it open. I found my sister clutching Macy’s furry mane, both of them on the floor, watching the sky fall.
“Come” I told her, and I held out my hand.
The lump in my throat grew larger when I felt her tiny hand slip into mine. Macy was calm, happy to be with us, I suppose. I led them both out into the middle of the yard. The sky cleared into what looked almost like night, revealing a canopy of tiny pinpricks of light, all of them starting to fall around us. The hail started to intensify, coating the yard in a layer of pulsating embers. I wish I could understand it, I really wish I could. Even now as I stand here in the middle of my yard, I can’t figure out the right way to tell you why it had to end. But I hope you understand that our happiness was real, in our world and in our time. I felt heat on my face, but not from the ashes. I had started to cry.