Lily was a girl made of letters.
Her blood was ink, black and thick, and coursing through her veins along with the unkept promises bound to the pages he sent. Home soon. When she read those words, those promises, her heavy, dark blood crashed through her body in a swell of dangerous hope. Her veins burst, and her lungs bubbled with blood instead of oxygen. Her air was sucked deep inside of her, strangling her, squeezing and twisting her organs tight, too tight. When she opened her mouth to scream, to sob, a rush of sticky, rotten blood crawled up her throat like vomit and choked her before pooling in her mouth and spilling over, dripping from her lips and her teeth like the juice from summer fruits.
Her heartbeat was the flutter of envelopes dropped at her doorstep, and unless he was there, her heart was painfully still; she was not alive. The ghost of himself was printed on the envelope that drifted and fell through the air like a dying moth, before brushing against the door with a barely-audible rush of wind that she trained her ears to catch. With that quiet little whisper as the paper made connection with the wood and slumped down to the floor, was the faint drum of a weakened heart coming to life.
Her limbs were made of tape, glue, and the broken pencil tips that gathered between the two of them. No matter the distance, she found him holding her sturdy with the proof of his survival, with tape and glue to keep her broken limbs from snapping. She prayed he had enough tape and glue left over, to keep the both of them from crumbling to pieces.
Her skin was paper thin. Ready to tear at any moment, so her inky blood and her paper heart and her broken bones could spill out and leave her blissfully devoid and dry. She was built on the foundation of love letters that broke her dying heart, and deep, aching sadness that brought her to her knees and locked her hands together as she cried bloody tears, and prayed for him, for the other paper girls out there. She prayed until she ran out of words and was so tired that all she could do was rest her head on her knees, and feel herself fall apart. Feel her skin tear and feel herself drown in her blood until her heart beat so rarely that her chest ached with emptiness. Then she could hide inside the comfort of her memories.
Her memory was a blissful place to live, a place where lovely words replaced nerves and brain matter, a place where promises could be kept. A place where the past was no longer painful and lonely, but beautiful and bright. In Lily’s mind, her husband was not a dead man walking in the trenches, but in their home as they danced together. They swayed at a slow, peaceful pace, as if they had all the time in the world. Tangled in the mournful cry of the violin were the words she believed only in her mind. I’m okay. I’m alive. I’ll be home soon. Home soon. And the quivering vibrato held her response. I miss you. I love you. Come home to me.
Come home.
Julia Weisenberg is a high school student and an aspiring writer from the Philadelphia area. She writes historically set short stories, and hopes to write something as beautifully epic as Victor Hugo one day. She loves any and all topics in history, but especially loves European history, because it truly is the soap opera of history.