Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

It’s the funny and the abiding puzzle found in sticky sets of syllables, ancient and varied, affixing themselves to a person, a hundred-year-old, multirooted cypress tree, finding its depth and permanence in a grove of many lives.

Me and Sara are tethered by time and hate, by blood and broken promises and dreams, and even more fractured beliefs of who’s guilty for what’s happened between us.

And the hate Ruby has for me is the same flavor I have for Sara. Salty with a little bit of smoke.

There’s no ointment or prayer that can heal mean. No one to deliver me like the fairy tales in storybooks or churches. We look to others to save us and we must save ourselves.

But he’s not dead because life’s not fair, and because God is as real as Santa Claus or rap stars who write their own lyrics or a father’s love or maybe love itself.

She wanted to fix people that liked being broken. Me. The girl. You can’t make a triangle a square or a circle a rectangle.

“Whenever you’re doing everything else but what you’re supposed to be doing, you have no peace.”

But more things than love bind people together, secrets and lies make just as hearty a bond as love.

All the places in which we feel we lack—perhaps we’re drawn to someone who has what we crave in abundance.

“Yes, but you’re letting what hasn’t happened run your life. You can’t make good decisions doing that. You can’t lead out of fear.”

So much time wasted. I suppose many people feel like this at one point in their lives. How a mistake can color every other action.

It’d be like trying to get the rotten out from fruit. You cut out the brown spots, but the decay, it’s somewhere beneath. You can never really enjoy the fruit because you’re always wondering if the fruit is good or if it’ll make you sick.

All have the potential to discover peace, turn it into something everlasting. But humans carry their sorrow and disappointment, their trials and tragedies. They drag them with them, ugly, battered luggage, opened and rummaged through for the sheer purpose of torturing themselves with unfortunate past actions.

Our history can shape the future, but it doesn’t define it. Our present is anchored by those around us, those we allow in our lives and those who, by default or shared blood, walk a road with us. What we choose to do with that companionship is up to us.