Get Stair Well
I met him on the stairs. Although he was not currently present, he was anything but absent in my thoughts. I loathed my surroundings as much as I resented the path that led me here. As a result, my eyes were pressed shut, hard enough that I could feel the pressure of my lids, picturing that shabby stairwell. Aside from the slight strain on my cheek muscles, the only other thing I could sense physically in that moment was a sterile squeeze of layered gauze. It taunted me, similarly to the damn room I had put myself in. The wrappings seemed to nag, "Another sad public attempt at pulling yourself out of your pathetic self-induced misery, not only gone awry, but displaying and proving just that!"
"The stairs, the stairs, the stares..." My mind spoke, struggling to articulate contemplation over the personal teasing.
The way Simon looked at me, unrelenting eye contact that was incomparable to anything I had ever before perceived. His dark defined brows never once quivered, or showed signs of false uncertainty. One of my favorite attributes of Simon was his exceptional stare, and that tremendous fondness lingered, far after our ties were cut. Once, the squeeze of my swollen beating heart; Simon perched on those stairs giving me specifically that look, that initial look. Now, my left hand felt plump with blood and constricted almost, by the cursed gauze. The severance of what I thought to be flawless connection between Simon and myself was not the sole incentive in the severance of my carpus veins. There were other terribly ominous and impending forces in my life; merely none of them seemed mentally accessible at this time. Nothing else appeared relevant at all, despite the exceedingly extraneous nature of the relationship I persisted to pain over. Shouldn’t I have been born-again or something?
Where was Simon now? When I needed him. He would always without a doubt ensure me of this notion that in no way could anything possibly be wrong while he was there. Before my suicide... attempt, I knew always of his whereabouts; not with me, but somewhere. Now, Simon seemed so distant, not alongside me, floating in what had to be dead space.
The rapping of soft knuckles on the oak door shook me awake from my reflections. My heart jolted, though my eyes remained forced-closed I rubbed my fingers together nervously, for the first time I could recall on my left hand. Time went fast, then slow with anticipation of the sliding doorframe against the fleshy pink colored carpet. Alas, a dreadful nurse.
An awfully sugary sweet drawl made its way from the hovering hospital aide, "Josh, a young man named Simon, I believe it was, is on hold. Shall I tell him that you are resting or would you like to answer?" Out of the sake of embarrassment, I prayed that there was not a heart monitor present.
A forceful recollection then instantly enveloped me.
“Simon.” My mouth uttered quietly, and affectionately. He was a man of such variance, so multifaceted, yet there seemed but one manner to verbalize his name. All aspects of Simon inadvertently personified romance, whether he envisioned himself that way or not. My long fingers very gradually glided through his silky, dark chocolate hair. The fingers on my left hand remained occupied, weaving easily in and out of his, something he did quite habitually, and could last for hours. We laid together sprawled out on the ivory carpet along the front of the undersized couch, both in our nightdress, and a comfortable silence. Gentle music drifted idly from the other side of the room, I had a difficult time sustaining my focus on anything, as my glance would catch Simon’s hypnotic gaze. If he and I stared long enough, one of us would inevitably lean closer for an unpretentious kiss, our eye contact paused momentarily as they synchronically closed. Simon’s clement hands would then often find their way to my neck, and over time my nervousness seemed to be somehow increasing slightly, contrary to the suspected decrease. He never minded my blatant adoration, though his reciprocation was displayed by dissimilar means. Try as I did, I could never shake so much as one of the tender and intimate things that he shared with me on those cozy evenings under blankets, on the floor. Simon was a person vigilant with his words; he painstakingly verbalized his feelings only when thought to be crucial in some way. The first disclosure of endearment being his thoughts on the dim stairwell, he told me he knew; he felt what he did in that moment, then. The importance of our sincere and mutual affinity for one another was something I was conscious of within our shared moments. All the time I became more aware of the vital nature of our connection, all relations would pale in comparison, and I would become desolate, even reckless, if I ever were to lose such honest a love. Our eyes locked, and our lips met again. The impassioned pounding in my chest the sole indication I was alive; that this was real. I was enamored, and then…
"H-hello?" I strongly endeavored to keep my nerves under wraps, that notion only reminding me of my black lace sutures.
"Josh, it's me. Simon... I'm on a payphone on the stairs, beside the hospital. Would it maybe be all right with you if I came up there to see you? I would greatly…" I could indentify he was remarkably nervous himself, his words embodied a tone I had very seldom heard, and his pauses would often say more than the diction he struggled for. I could feel the sound sewing me back together.
"Of course." I spoke, through closed eyes, cracking lips, and a beaming smile.
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