Love & Hate Lines
[title type="subtitle-h6"]Cole Meyer[/title][vc_row][vc_column width="11/12"][vc_column_text][audio wav="http://www.uwilluminationjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Cole-Meyer-Love-and-Hate-Line.wav"][/audio][spacer height="5"]She slipped a note in his back pocket between English and Math and quickly walked away. He pulled it out and read in the sloppy sixth grade handwriting, “I love you.” His pulse quickened so rapidly he thought blood would begin pouring out his ears. His head turned in her direction, but all he could see was the back of her head, her jet black ponytail beating against her back like an extension of her heart. A grin split his face in half. The next day, he held her hand.On the last day of seventh grade, he walked her home. He leaned in to kiss her strawberry chapstick lips, and she turned away. She said her parents were watching, and he knew that wasn’t true, but he didn’t argue. He shrugged, and nodded, and bit the inside of his cheek to hold back the tears welling just behind his eyes. When the door to her house closed, and she left his life, he let the rivers break the levies. That summer, he stayed indoors.On the eighty-third day of eighth grade, he put a note in her locker and quickly walked away. He went into the bathroom and stared at his paling skin, the love and hate lines on his wrists, and the ones he knew were there but couldn’t see. His parents told him she was just a girl, but they didn’t understand. When she read the note, she sighed and crumpled it into her pocket and walked home alone. “Why won’t you talk to me anymore?” That night, he cried himself to sleep.On the seventh day of ninth grade, she grabbed him when no one was around and kissed his patient lips.On the first day of tenth grade, she called him a freak.On the one hundred-fortieth day of eleventh grade, she held her boyfriend’s hand in the hallway. He caught her eye and smiled. Her lips made an attempt at an up-turn, and then dropped back down, much like his heart. She turned the corner, and he gave up. He wrote himself a note: “She was never meant for you.” That mo- ment, he opened his eyes.She skipped school the last day of twelfth grade. Her boyfriend drove them out towards the lake. She turned her head towards his the moment the pickup truck turned the corner, crushing the car, their bodies, their dreams. He found out over the loud speaker. He excused himself from class. In the bathroom, he looked at the pale lines along his arms. That night, he didn’t sleep.When they lowered her casket into the ground, the crowd cried in collective frustration. Such youth, and potential, and happiness. Such a loving spirit. The last person at her graveside was a young man. He knelt beside the headstone, heart pounding like when he was eleven years old. He pulled a note from his back pocket, worn with years. He kissed the ground she was buried beneath, placed the note down and read it aloud to himself: “I love you.”[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]