Lotus

by Jennifer Hartmann

“Like every star in the galaxy tumbled to Earth and crawled beneath my skin.”

“Do you feel the same?” Eyes are aligned, holding hard. Skin flushed. Breaths woven and wound. A silent eternity passes before she shakes her head. “I don’t.” I crumble. She catches me. “There’s no way you could possibly feel what I’m feeling, what I’ve felt, from the moment Gabe told me they found you. That you were alive. You have no idea what it was like to be haunted by you for twenty-two years, then to hold you in my hands, flesh and bone, like you were back from the dead. You couldn’t understand any of that.” Sydney’s fingers curl tighter around my wool sweater, her gaze tormented. “So, no, Oliver… we don’t feel the same. It would be impossible.” I drink in her words, feeling them soak into my skin. I realize in that moment that Sydney also wears a mask, much like my brother. She hides behind her humor and sarcasm, a defense mechanism, a strategy to cope with all the ghosts she keeps inside. Cupping her face between my hands, I feel her turmoil with every blink, every tremor, every jaded heartbeat trapped inside her throat, choking her. “I’m here now, Sydney. I’m right here.”

“You’re going to lose me by trying too hard not to lose me, Syd.”

Before I turn to leave, dejected and bewildered, I spare Sydney a final glance. There’s a hurricane in her eyes, and it’s either going to swallow me whole or leave me crippled, on my knees, lost and alone amongst the wreckage.

“I just…” He’s wide-eyed and broken. “I’m trying to understand you, Syd. I’m trying to learn why you pull away from me—why I can’t fully reach you. Why you run.” “Because I’m petrified of stripping away your progress and sending you back down into that hole!” I blurt, sorrow leaking out of my eyes, my throat stinging. “Feelings come with expectation, Oliver. I’m no good at that.” “You heal me. Every day you put another piece of me back together,” he insists, crossing the room, cautiously approaching. “Why do you associate attachment with suffering and loss?” I’m openly crying into my palm, shaking my head. “God, who hurt you, Sydney?” “You did!” I shriek, unplanned and untethered, my hysteria bubbling over. “Something inside of me fucking died the day I lost you!” Oliver freezes in place, his eyes flaring, his limbs going completely still. He stares at me, slack-jawed, with the most wounded, bewildered look upon his face. “I started building walls at only seven-years-old,” I continue, my voice ragged from the grief spilling out, a tsunami of bottled-up ghosts. I ambush him with my graveyard. “Day by day, those walls went up, made of stone and brick and steel and you. I couldn’t let anyone in because I couldn’t bear to feel the way I felt after you disappeared. Not again… not ever. You have no idea what you meant to me. What you mean to me.” The heel of my palm slams against my chest with clenched teeth. “Syd, I…” He trails off, lost for words. I keep going. “I’ve spent my ...

All these years, I’ve never given my heart to anyone. I told myself it was because I was too picky, too independent, my standards were too high… but that’s not the truth. The truth is, I didn’t have a heart to give. My heart was with a ghost.

“For so long, I was just a name carved into a stone wall. I was a picture on paper, created by my own muddled mind,” he confesses, and there’s anguish woven into his words, evidence of his years of loneliness. But then his eyes find their way back to mine, and I see a shift. I see hope. “You make me feel like I’m… someone.” “You are someone, Oliver. You always have been.” The tears hit hard, and there is no shame in them. Only love, so much goddamn love, a love I’ve been holding inside me for nearly all of my life. I choke on the words that spill out of me. “When I was five-years-old, I gave you my heart on your front porch, and you gave me an oatmeal cookie, and I’ve thought about that moment every single day for over two decades. Even when you were gone, you still held my heart.” “I’m not gone anymore, Syd.” His palms find my face, clasping my cheeks, tears slipping through his fingers. “I’m right here, with you, and I’m still holding onto your heart. Please don’t ask me to give it back.” A tiny sob breaks free, and I kiss him.

“I ache for you, Sydney,” Oliver rasps, one hand curling behind my head, fisting my hair. “I crave to be inside you more than I craved freedom in all of those twenty-two years combined.”

“All I want is you. All I’ve ever wanted is you.”

The fact that I was able to touch her, taste her, have her, only to be abruptly cut off, is a feeling I can’t quite describe. It’s a loss that makes my soul ache.

“I love you, Syd. I loved you then, I love you now, and I’ll love you until my dying day.” There was never a question, never a doubt. I love this woman.

Sydney’s hands grasp my face, a tear slipping from the corner of her eye. Her thoroughly kissed lips tip into a grin. “I’ve waited twenty-five years to hear you say that.” The back of my fingers sweep across her cheekbone. “No more waiting.”