I waited.

We had planned to commit suicide together when we were fifteen years old. We would find the perfect set of railroad tracks, you said. We would lie down together, our hands clasped, and go out with a bang.

I spent the next ten years searching for that perfect set of tracks. You spent those years searching through me, my shell, trying to find the fix for my sickness, my incurable melancholy and the long hours of hot tea on the roof of our apartment building. I liked my tea with honey, never sugar, and you'd murmur honey and kiss my lips and try to fix me.

Shortly after ten years together passed, I found the tracks and you had given up on a cure long ago. There was never a cure, Jer, didn't you realize that? Bipolar and broken and all I wanted to do was die. You had tucked the promise away, brushed it off even after I took you there. You swore you'd meet me there that Tuesday in July, and I waited.

That stretch of tracks wound itself through the deepest hills of Minnesota, through the golden-laid hills of wheat dotted with wildflowers and the occasional sow. I walked that road and waited for the perfect intersection, waited for you to trail after me like we'd planned.

The dirt stirred inside the worn soles of my sneakers, inside my worn soul and my broken heart. That old road stirred from its long slumber and rumbled beneath my feet, its path aching with the brokenness of my heart as I waited.

That perfect intersection came, but you never did.

You never came, and you'll never read this, but I loved you. I waited as long as I could, Jer, and you never came. You were busy with your life, your material things and your wholesome goodness and the boy you'd met downtown. You stopped loving me, and I stopped waiting.

I almost didn't do it. I almost turned around, away from my intersection, but I swore you'd find me like you swore you loved me, empty-shelled heart crushingly broken, you never came.

I took my seat on the tracks and waited as the dust settled around me, around you in our empty apartment, meaningless things and college and life and broken promises.

It came late at night. I had almost given up hope, hope that you would come, hope that the train would be there. But it came, fulfilling its promise, and I curled up against the cool metal of the tracks and closed my eyes. My hand was empty, void of yours, and I wanted to hurt you, Jer. The train gave a low, mournful whistle, the sound a broken heart would make if it did anything but beat ache throb pulse break and I was gone.

Author's Note

If you're wondering about the narrator's sex, it's really however the reader perceives it. I'm in a really fucky mood today.

Reviews returned, if I like what you've got.

All works by this author are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.