Suicidal Flight

Story inspired by a metaphor by Sylvia Plath. Reference to Rupi Kaur

The bruise was as black as the night sky. I got it first when I was eight, hunched over a bicycle. Sometimes, when I trace my fingers over the white apple flesh of my skin, I can still see the scars there, two faint black dots, one in the shape of a heart. I got it again two years ago, the rough metal of a ring pressed into my core. David´s skin crinkled with anger as he slammed booze bottle after booze bottle into me, breath like hot whisky. With David, I developed an affinity for bleeding.

August was cold and unforgiving when it came to my kind of people: city folk, broke, poor as dirt, with mud underneath our fingernails. Love was, too. Love didn’t happen to people like me, not really, not like the girls in the movies with their glittering nails. Love, like any addiction, comes slowly, bitterly. A gust of wind in a broad white day, the drop of an autumn leaf or a hat, it snowballs into you. 

Although I’m sure you’ve heard that analogy before.

Is it possible to be addicted to sadness?

I think I was.

There was ice in my breath when David first said ¨I love you,¨ I think I was exhaling cold. It was the coldest night of the year, and we lay in bed, feet scrunched together and hands entangled. He held me, I shook and shook, and it was good anyways, yeah it was good. Ï wasn't sad, not even a little, I didn't think I knew how to be sad around him at this point. When he spoke, I didn't care that I was cold, because he was warm. I knew I was in love with him before I said it, and even then, even as it happened, I knew it was one of those things that would leave a mark on me, that I would remember forever, that would shape every decision I made from that moment onwards. The only thing is that I didn't know just how deep it would run in my blood, just how much those words would be engraved on my scars from that moment onward.

So when I said, ¨I love you,¨ and he said it back, I just nodded and closed my eyes, let his rays of warmth crash into me like waves. 

I heard once that the earth itself was like a bruise, beaten by the sun, from hosting life. And so I didn't care when he began to hit me, not at first.

I knew he was angry. I knew, and I felt it like sunlight on my flesh, felt it burning me up. I was angry too. That’s the only way I could feel, cold and numb as a rock.

This is the world being blue, you feel love only in burning red. I thought his lust was love, I let the heat warm me.

Here is the first problem with this trial: he tried, he really tried. Even when I began to fear coming home, fear the constant fighting and shrink back from the look on his face. 

I was an odd creature, a disgusting one, one who had never been loved before, and it was apparent just by looking at me. Like some ugly animal who had withered from lack of sunlight- here is the second problem with this trial. I had never deserved love, had never been deemed worthy and I was being given it. That in itself gave him the moral high ground.

But here is the real reason I am not a victim: I knew he was angry.  You could see it in his eyes, he was hurt, and I wanted to feel some of it.  I always knew the way he´d bunch up his fists and close his eyes, knew the days he would leave the room shaking with pent-up rage. I didn’t know him, but I knew that anger. I lived with it, it haunted me, since I was a child.

I remember the first time he hit me. It wasn't a particularly bad argument, but I think something in him just snapped. He had been angry a lot around then, some sort of harassment charge at his company that he refused to tell me about. I kept telling him that it was okay, that I would believe him no matter what, but he just looked at me and shook his head. ¨You´re pathetic,¨ he told me.

And then I did the worst thing, and I pushed him to the edge. ¨Just talk to me!¨ I shrieked. ¨You never talk to me anymore.¨ His hand swung back so fast I didn't expect it.

I flinched. I looked at him in shock. 

He said nothing, but he crawled to me in tears the next day, begging me to forgive him. ¨I´m so sorry,¨ he whispered, over and over. ¨I´m so sorry.¨ 

Sorry. 

Nobody ever, ever had apologized to me before. And I had done this, I had been the reason he had been crying, I had been the reason the only man good enough to love me had been in so much pain. I had been weak, I had been emotional, and I deserved neither.

¨It's okay,¨ I whispered, touching his face. ¨I deserved it, really, I did. And it's okay.¨

I had been stupid. I had thought that I deserved to yell at him, that I deserved to demand. There was a reason I had been alone for most of my life, there was no question that I needed him, and of course he didn't need me back the same way. I should never have thought myself that important, I had learned this time and time again. The world didn't care so much about girls like me.

After he hit me, I sat huddled by the open fireplace, and watched as a moth- an odd looking but quite interesting little creature, fluttered around the room. First she checked out the lampshade, then the post, and then, without warning, she shot herself directly into the fire.

¨No!¨ I snapped automatically, and jerked my hand into the flames before I could stop myself.

There I was again, jumping into the flames.

The moth shuttered, almost shook, a flapping of wings, and then: it was gone. 

Here’s what it was, with David, at the end of the day: I loved him. I loved him, you see, more than life itself, more than anybody had ever bothered to love me, and this is where the trouble began to kick in. The core of an apple my heartbeat, I was eaten alive by him, by the glimmer of truth he seemed to represent. I loved him, loved him totally and completely, and he seemed to love me just the same. He liked to lean over and kiss me in the flesh of night, and like a poet he spun stories of shipwrecks and drama when I couldn’t sleep.

I had never had this kind of love before, the kind like flames licking my legs, the kind like a moth being eaten alive by the fire.

Like a bat, my hair raised, my eyes heightened at the sight of him, like some part of me knew, always knew. He would be my husband. Or he would kill me. How do you know the difference between passion and murder?

Ten weeks later I lay on my side, breathing fast. Blood stained my mattress, and I felt my ribs tensing and I tried to swallow a full breath. Pain shot through me when I touched my chest, and so I didn´t, just lay limp and unfighting. How funny, I thought, thinking I was dying, to be hurting as much on the outside as I was on the inside.

When the ambulance came, I lied. I said I tripped and fell, a stupid excuse, but they had to believe me. They had to treat my wounds, tender hands nursing them to calm, but they could not fix me, and the nurses knew that. ¨Sweetie, you didn't deserve this,¨ one nurse said to me in a hush of breath. ¨You didn't deserve this at all.¨ Her hands soothed me. I didn't bother telling her how wrong I was.

I wanted to leave, I thought, lying on my side. For the first time, I could tell myself, I really and truly wanted to leave.

¨Nurse Palma?¨ I asked, my voice quiet. 

¨Yes, love?¨ She smiled that warm smile, and I couldn't help but wonder how much pain must have gone into creating a smile so kind, so knowing.

¨So say there's this guy,¨ I began, knowing she would tense up with excitement, watching it. I could hear in her voice what she knew that she couldn't say. ¨What?¨ she asked, her voice glazing.

¨Say maybe I don't quite know how to leave him, or if I should.¨

The russian in her accent began to trip out as she spoke, ¨This.. this guy..¨

¨Let's call him Arnold,¨ I said.

¨Arnold, then. How do you.. equate..someone who has done horrible things to you with someone who saved you?¨

¨Saved you?¨ she repeated.

¨Yeah. I mean, I was really alone when I met him, and then I wasn´t, and he was kind to me, so.. Yeah.¨

¨But this guy, Arnold, does he hurt you?¨

My stomach tensed up, and not because of the pain. The question. The inevitable question.

¨I think so.¨

¨Then he is not kind.¨

¨Yeah, but..¨ I stopped, trying to think of something. It was too much, it was all too much.

Nurse Palma walked over to me, touched my stomach gently. ¨What he felt for you is not love. It never was.¨ The thing I feared the most. Then she smiled. ¨You know how I know?¨ she asked. She didn't wait for a response. ¨Because I love you.¨

¨Why?¨

¨If you have to answer,¨ she said, ¨then it is not love.¨

We were silent for a second.

¨There was this man of my own. My Ted.¨ Her accent was very thick now, or maybe it was just hard to speak. ¨He beat me into a miscarriage and abandoned my two children.¨ She said this bluntly, plainly, as if she had been through this all before and decided that this was all that was important in this relationship.

¨I´m sorry,¨ I said, once again struck by how horrible it all sounded when you said it out loud.

¨Is it alright if I tell someone what you told me?¨

¨Okay.¨

¨I´ll get you some juice, alright? And turn on the TV.¨

¨Okay.

I’m not going to go through the rest- here is what was important. Here is what I remember. The ending- the leaving.

And then there it was, in a blur, in a whir of pain. I remembered that moth again, the one with her wings flapping, almost otherworldly, as she burned.

Like she was being consumed by the fire. Her suicidal flight to the flame.

“I’m leaving!” I had yelled.

The rain poured hard, hard on me as I opened the door, the taxi cab awaiting me, knowing it was the last time.

I had never had this kind of love before, the kind like flames licking my legs, the kind like a moth being eaten alive by the fire.

Svetlana Rostova is a teenage girl with a deep passion for art, writing, and all things creative. She spends her time, reading, writing, and coming up with new ideas. She is an accomplished poet with a national Silver Medal in scholastic and has been published previously more than 60 times. She hopes to one day publish a book or novel and is mostly focused on improving her work as a poetry writer. Her main inspirations include Olivia Gatwood, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Laurie Halse Anderson. She would be honored to have the chance to receive publication and would appreciate it. She is based in the US.