South Grand Boulevarde

Dear Levi,

Last night was almost too much. I sat in the parking lot of church, watching you and her and your friends laugh and celebrate in the sweet light of the front steps and I just cried. I cried in the darkness and let my heart break, shatter, explode into tiny little pieces of insignificance. I know I'm sick. I know my body and my mind is worn out. I know it's late and it's been a long week. And above all those things, all I know is that I can't stop feeling the pain, I can't stop feeling the love. And I can't take it anymore. I just can't.

So I drove back to the beginning. I often visualize the hill by the boy's dorm as the moment when I lost it all. Maybe it was. But as I drove down the darkness to the little pitiful park on South Grand Boulevarde, I realized for the first time that this was truly the end. This was the gravestone. This was the last place you held me, the last time you cried, the last time you tried. This was the place of my final failure. This was the last place when I saw Levi inside your liquid caramel eyes, the last time I was allowed inside Santana and against your coat. The last time you cared for me.

I drove there, and I broke. I sat on the cold asphalt and felt the splinter of glass shards among the cheap crumbling blacktop and I sobbed, I sobbed, I sobbed. Freezing tears in the freezing wind, just as cold as that night. I could see the shadow of your car in my mind, I could see the curve of the tires against the asphalt just behind my reach. And my car sat there, a solemn reminder that I'm not crazy. We were here, once, you and I. And the Devon Tower glowed at us laughingly back then, too. Twinkling like a Satanic statute of what would never be across the vast, black expansion of some kind of field. That night a year ago, I thought about walking out into that field and lying down somewhere in the void and giving up on things. I thought about it this night, too. Last time, you were there to stop me. This time, the echo of your memory was.

It was so hard. It was so, so, hard. I cried, because there was no other option. I wept, because all I have is the fruit of my own failure. And there I was, all alone in the cold, and you were out somewhere in the warmth of your happy life.

How did you do it, Levi? How did you move on? How did you feel nothing, grieve nothing, find happiness again so soon? How did you dismiss all the dreams, all the plans, all the memories? And how did you decide that night as I drove off into the distance that you would never, ever try again?

Was she already in your life at that point? What happened on the long, black drive back home? What did you think when you got back into Santana? What did you think when you watched my lights disappear and heard my enginge explode into the quiet of the night? What did you think when you drove along that own route? Where did you go? And why did you come home so late? Why did you even bother to text me? At what point did you decide my tears were worthy of your hate, your disdain? When? When, Levi? When? And why? Oh, why why why?

It's because I can't comprehend how you moved on that I can't comprehend how you would ever come back. I used to dream. I used to dream, dream, and pray, pray. But now? Now? In the aloneness of that night in the miserable little speck of a park in a worthless city in a country that doesn't even know of my dreams in a world that is too busy for my existence, there was no hope. No more hope, no more dreams, no more prayers.

Just tears.

So many anguished, dying tears. Like the night I walked out of Andri's house and walked into the city night and found the church. When I crawled under the bench in the darkness of the garden and just cried, cried, cried. Another cold winter night in another pointless American city. Another night when I realized my lost. The pointlessness of it all. The hopelessness of it all. And that you would never, never care.

Andri came for me that night. Brad bundled me up in his coat and they drug me to a psychologist. But you didn't come for me this night. And I knew it. I knew you wouldn't. I knew you never would come for me. All I can think about is the night you found me on the bus, how broken I was, how empty and lifeless and... a shell of a soul, cringing on the edge of existence. And all I can think is that if I go to work tomorrow, if I put on a smile and pretend to join the world of the living, it's just a huge facade. Because I'm dead on the inside. I'm so dead anymore.

Just me, just God.

And that's when the prayers return. You see, it was never suicide. Not in anger. Not in despair. It was just... a desperate wish. A wish to be with God. Because if people are only going to leave me broken and cold and shivering and crying on the asphalt of an empty, soulless city... I just want to be with God. I just want to be in his arms. I just want to go home.

Please, God, please. Can't I come home to you now?

I'll never get him back. I know it. I'll never get him back, I'll never get a second chance. And that's okay... somehow... it's okay. I never deserved him the first time. I never dreamt he'd reach out in the darkness of that bus and change my life. He gave me hope when I had none... and then slowly took it all away agian, and here I am in the same place. With nothing but you, God. Isn't it enough? To just want to be with you now? You gave me my memories with him, and I wasn't ever worthy of them He was too good for me, too perfect, too sweet, too precious, too... unreal. Like an angel. My Levi angel.

And he's never coming back for me. Dri never did. Levi never will. I will only know loss. And I'm so tired, God, I'm so scared and alone and little and, please? please? must I beg so hard? Must I cry so many tears before you take me up in your wings? Where is your mercy? Oh, that you would show a drop of mercy on my broken soul. I can't bear the pain anymore. It is growing too great. It is swallowing me up.

And I went home, when I was so cried out there was nothing but dryness. Dryness and hollowness and... dizziness. A dizzy, swirling, distorted reality. Soulless. Resigned.

And I pulled out my Bible, and I read Psalm 69. And the verses, wow... they were me. But David is so much stronger than me. He had the patience of grace to bear his burden. Do I? Did I ever become a stronger girl than the one who died in Lake Arlynn in Pekin? Did I ever become better than her? Did I? And I went to bed, and I cried myself to sleep again, pitiful tears against hot cheeks and a feverish throat and swollen mind... and I knew that God was with me.

Somehow, in this darkness, there has to be hope.

Your star,
flickering in the darkness of the night sky...
Rigel