Really?!

Image of Short Story
I can’t believe that I’m sitting here with man whom I was going to marry and I love my cat more.
Or do I? it’s not exactly loving the cat more, maybe its just understanding him through his choices. Oh, right, Sugar, not cat...she will always come back because I saved her a long time ago. But he will not and I cannot let his easy way of escaping pain cause me more pain.
So, man and cat; i want her to die in my arms not on a farm with children I don’t know and would probably hate, or at least long to be among? Actually I hate him because he cannot handle death. Weird because of course, neither can I. I thought my terror had to do with life, not escape-oops, death. What would he do if I were sick, if I were dying? Send me away, not look back?

But suicide - not mine, not man’s, not Sugar’s, my father’s... what nerve, but what strength - harder to leave than people think - suicide is not the easy way out, it’s the heartbreaking way out. It must be; have you ever stood at the edge of a terrace, a wall, a cliff, and faced how sad you were at that moment, not just scared, but sad? So, is it man or is it my father? Are they so different after all, at least in the places they occupy? Center stage and all that...
Maybe the reason I forgave him his cruelty is because he showed me it can be done, people continue on... I too can go, slip over the edge. Poor Gloucester, he was tricked. And all because his son would not let him go. O selfish child. Sugar would never hold me back.

But first I will find myself in Sugar’s gaze, then that of the mirror’s, then anyone’s return glance. Being alone isn’t the only problem; being with man is another one.
Just go, get the fucking cat, and move across town, across country, across oceans - drift.
Of course Sugar can’t go all those places, but then she’s going to die very soon anyway....
I’ll wait.

Sugar’s dead. Believe it or not, Sugar jumped! Just like that... sitting on a windowsill slowly dying would not be how she said farewell. She followed a flock as they flew by - she soared for a split second, turned, caught my gaze, and I blew a kiss. Then she let go and fell, all the way to the ground. Not yet dead, but torn up inside, as was I. She died two days later in my arms.

So, now I’m in Italy starting over; but what is over, anew, yet again, fresh start? Are they substantively different than carrying on, picking up where things left off, tying up loose ends, second chances?? These pretentious thoughts aren’t going to transform into money, food, and they are just those useless notions that people cling to when trying to get a move on.

First, the language, then the job, then the home, then the friend. What a sorry joke this is, that if I write about the horror and the fear I will be able to move into another state; but if I write about the envy and the cruelty, I will discover the truth about people I once loved. I must trust that I will write in ways that even I won’t expect until on the page. Here I go...

He was small and miserable, and he knew where to go next so that he could escape his fate. Not his size or his state, but his fate. He could no longer work in that factory, he could no longer go home and smell the rotting walls of his life. But he could jump into the river that runs fiercely below the bridge and go where the currents would drag him. Down and drown, floating into a new world. One in which his misery would be less than the madness it was here on top of the bridge. But wait, a cat - a cat? Here, on the bridge? Coming towards him, licking whiskers all the way. He had to laugh. Really? Laugh? If he could find a hardy Ha at this second how powerful could his misery actually be? Did someone send the cat to save him or did the cat just know who and what needed saving, where and when? I sent the cat, fool! I wrote him into your life because she left mine. I would not allow her peace in some other dimension when I needed her so. Sugar, save him!

He was saved, he loved, he prospered, he grew old. He never forgot Sugar, that day on the bridge, or me, the one who put her there. I however, never saw him again because his quiet spin-around saved me from my turn on the bridge. It wasn’t the language, or the job, or the home, or the friend. It was the man in my mind who had to get so close to the edge and I with him so that I could spin around and walk backwards. Time and space sure, but as man had told me walking out the door - write this down.
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