Shadows of bruises. That’s all I see. Around the eyes, fingerprints on the neck, and there must be more along his chest. But those are hidden. Hidden by a soft white linen jacket, masking the marks of a night gone horribly wrong. A night where the truth ended in pain. This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
His body lays like an old statue, and somewhere deep inside me there is a sense of unnerving. I have never seen him so still in the five years that I’ve known him. A part of me wants to reach out and shake his arm to see his bright blue eyes open wide to take me in, with a laugh bubbling out of him… as though this whole thing were just a joke.
The fresh ink of the words in a small box in a corner of Sunday’s paper would suggest otherwise. This was no joke. In fact, his effervescent laughter is growing faint in my memory against my will to remember. As though a dim record were skipping in the back of my mind, his laughter that sounded like continuous hiccups, start to slip away in pieces. I’ll miss them.
Through the subtle stale smell of phermeldahide, there is a slight sweet aroma of orchids circulating the room. Orchids of pink and orange stand next to the oak box surrounding a sign. On the sign, there is a picture of him from three months ago in his backyard. Blue eyes crinkled at the edges, his larger two front teeth taking up much of his smile that lit up his whole face. His lanky build was angled towards someone who sat next to him on his trampoline and his right arm was looped around her neck as her own her wrapped tightly around his waist, wrinkling the finely pressed button-down he was wearing.
The name below the picture is one that will stay with me for the rest of my life: Peter Dameron. That girl in the picture is me. This was us before everything spilled out… before our relationship changed for good. I would not say things went wrong. I’d say one thing came out right, even if Peter’s father didn’t see it that way.