The Spider & the Storm

by Kelsey Kingsley

A solitary creature, the black widow. Feared and often misunderstood for her venom, yet her only true desire wasn’t to terrorize, but to simply be left alone to live her life and do her work. I knew the feeling well. I’d known it for years.

I’d never seen a green quite so deep, never known eyes could take on such a hue, and just like that, in that instant, it was my favorite. I knew I’d remember it for the rest of my life. I’d hunger for another glance, and I’d have no choice but to starve.

Because sometimes, our memories were crueler than the ghosts that haunted us, and the only thing you could do to chase them away was to caffeinate and wake the hell up.

Everything changed a little when the person you saw as Superman took off his cape, and that was exactly what was happening now as I watched my brother fall apart. He’d become a little more human, a little more like me.

But grief had a funny way of being evergreen, no matter how much time had passed, and it was as fresh as it’d ever been now.

I shrugged and looked around the hallowed ground, then said, “I don’t know. I think, when I’m dead, I wouldn’t want to haunt the place where I was buried. I’d probably prefer to go wherever the people I cared about were.” He nodded slowly with what seemed like consideration, looking off into the distance, before saying, “Maybe they just don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“We mourn what once was, and we mourn the possibility of what could’ve been.

Misery doesn’t just love company; it knows it when it sees it. And like I said, I see you, and no amount of broody grumpiness is going to make you magically disappear now.”

“Because you'll be there,” he said with finality. “And I just decided that, for as long as we have together, I'll go where you go.”

“The past can haunt us just as well as anything else, if not better,” I countered, not meaning to argue, but wanting to offer another perspective. One in which the past was incapable of remaining where it belonged. “It is, after all, by nature, full of ghosts.” “That's true. But I made the conscious decision to leave my demons where they belong, and that's that.”

“Let it go, Charlie,” she whispered, touching her forehead to mine. “And until you do, I'll love you enough for both of us.”

“You act like I'm perfect, and I'm far from it.” “No, and neither am I. But I think, together, we make something that's pretty fucking close.”

“My soul doesn't know how to not love yours. All I had to do was meet you to know that I had been put into this universe to hold you and protect you and shelter you from every terrible thing that had ever come your way until you were strong enough to face it on your own. And whenever that happens, if ever it does, my soul will stand beside yours, even while the rest of the world has been conditioned to run from us both.”