fawn

by Nash Summers

You? You’re all those special times in between. You’re those frozen moments that everyone forgets to breathe during. You’re what I reach out for, but just can’t seem to touch. You’re those hours of silence that pull themselves longer and longer until there’s nothing left of them but a faint memory of a Once Upon a Time.

It had to be otherworldly, because when that boy with the raven-black hair and the crystal-blue eyes looked at me, Heaven wasn’t heaven anymore.

“Ancel.” I whispered his name like it was a feather I was trying to hold only with the sound of my voice.

We were all ghosts to him, figments of his imagination, maybe, just blurs on the surface of the planet that he had to move around and weave through. But that was all right. I didn’t mind being invisible to him as long as I was still allowed to watch him walk through the field and run his fingers through the grass.

But instead of lying on my bed and wishing all the things in my life could be different, I closed my eyes and found myself wondering about crumpled-up pieces of paper in a tree that had been left there by a boy with hair the color of fire.

The moment our eyes met, I went to him. We were attached by thin, invisible strings that tied each piece of us together. They were wrapped tight around me and shrinking smaller and smaller by the second.

As the back of him disappeared through the gate to his yard, I knew he’d never be mine. But I knew just as well that I’d always be his.

He would keep it. Maybe not forever, but at least for a little while, a part of me would be with him.

Everything was beautiful in its own way— you just had to look close enough.

Ancel would never see me. But I’d assured myself that that was all right, because I could still see him. He was all I saw, even when I closed my eyes.

He wasn’t from this world, this blood-haired boy. He was from a fantasy where faeries and pixies danced through the woods and slept in dewy beds of twigs and petals. He was a creature unlike anything poets or philosophers could conjure up. He was born from alchemy, created by twisting storm clouds and rays of sunshine together.

“Roll over, little fawn.”

“Please don’t leave me again. Please don’t go.”

“No, Rust.” His eyes showed no flicker of untruth. “It could never be you. Nothing about you could ever be wrong.”

“I’ve forgotten what it feels like— all of it. Summer, winter, snow, rain, wind, fresh air, thunderstorms. I miss the sun, Rust. I miss it so damn much. Show me again what it feels like.” I spent the rest of the night showing him.

I cried because even though he’d broken my heart three times, it still belonged to him.

Everyone else is so black and white. But you sing to the birds in the trees and talk to pinecones when you think no one else is around, and you dance and twirl and spin in the rain.

Why do you wear feathers and flowers laced into your hair? My dad says it’s not right for boys to wear flowers in their hair. I think he must be wrong, because they look like the Earth sprung them from the ground just so you could wear them in your hair.