Stealing Lavender: Chapter One

The Past
Chapter One

“Encircle me, I need to be taken down…”
“The Con”, by Tegan and Sara

         Lavender was like smoke rising; an aura that the tangibility of hands could never attach to. Sometimes if you looked at her too closely, she would blur in around the edges, always so quick to slip away. Her hair was ruby when we met, wavy and cut where her small ears were pierced. It was the first color that drew me in until her olive skin, which glistened beneath the moon like they had always belonged to one another. They had parts to play in this universe and her sporadic scenes of being fell close to me, happening accidentally in my atmosphere, where one might be lucky enough to reach out and touch her. Or keep her.
         But she was never one to be kept. By anything, or any one place, and especially by no one. As untethered as the red balloon moments after it is abandoned by a child’s spoiled hands. Away she would go, without goodbyes or regrets. And I was mad with envy. Or love. I could never decide. Lavender was ethereal and never still; the moments of my life without her were left haunted, a null sleeve of an existence that I could have had, if she had stayed.
         We were on the precipice of our lives then, our little discoveries like far off planets that had yet to pop but we felt as if we had seen it all. Our seeds had been planted in the sunken grounds of neglect and tumultuousness, our stems grown from lessons that favored forest floors, where the sunlight could hardly ever reach us. Creatures of adaption and endurance. We were full to the brimmings with unbridled knowledge and philosophers of our own making. Twin souls met centuries prior that synchronicity itself pulled back together; woven into each other by the sins of our fathers and those before him.
         I lived in an attic several miles away and she lived in a maze. I met her there once, in a sapphire pool that melted into her like butter. The moon was there too, so full it might collapse down onto us and I was nostalgic for this film from when faeries stole my charm bracelets and nothing made sense. I was like a child again and Lavender was a swan made human, her blood royal and cursed. She knew she was mesmerizing as she shimmered awake, just for me. She cooed from a place well-traveled, my flowery sun dress whimsical and out of place,
         “You should come in,” her voice a wisp in the springtime air.
         Lavender’s eyes looked bedroom heavy, a green that made my rough hands smell of dirt and lives well-lived. She knew that I loved her before the great feeling touched ground inside me, its mud soaked toes wiggling around and making room for itself. Strangely, I forgot that we weren’t so alone. She existed and then, I existed. There was no one else. She peered into me, irises like deep oceans and emerald trees when the sunlight had barely shaken awake.
         “You think I could steal you away?” And before locution could ever take form, a deeper and near uneasy declaration happened behind me, a bellow that somehow turned whisper,
         “It’s getting late.” He shook the glittery reveries quickly from my rosy hair until my senses came searing back, the fiery warmth of his great grasp pulling me toward him. Away from her. My stance in the world was never more hesitant to give into movement, an antigravity that dug my heels into the concrete; a stubborn depression of me that would always be there. Once he detached me, cordless now from such dreamscapes, we drove in silence. When we arrived, my attic light flickered, calling me closer to write about what had transpired but we remained still. I waited, and he waited, and for what felt interminable, the silence enveloped us. The door slammed hard, a force that rattled my bones as I removed myself from the scene. As if saving all my words for her, I vanished into the night to recite some poetry, leaving him with nothing.
         I was only metaphors back then and terribly misunderstood by the simplicities of man. The boy that loved me that summer, he was sottishly stupid. I had tried to care for him; taught him to read better and to love better, unrequitedly. He trailed my tresses like the hound that he was but I let him and when Lavender sent me hearts seeking solitude, I wildly obliged. As a vessel made for veiling truths underneath prettier truths, my desire remained as husky and as large as him. It could not be hidden. Irrepressible, I walked with intention and my mother had scooted him, a babe in need of love, into the tangled branches of me. Pin-pricked by my sharp edges, he would only avert his attention to my softer leaves, not knowing how poisonous they could also be for him. He had these big, beautiful wells of crystal blue eyes that sat unknowing, in beds full of thousands of black lashes. Sometimes, I wondered if those thousand filaments were what hid my resolve from him. Or perhaps like me, he would do anything for love.
         Someone lovely lingered in her ether too, her dark eyes watching my every movement when we were all together. We would drive around in her beat up Volkswagen that had stickers like Rancid and NOFX lining its bumper. Following Lavender into whatever hell that pleased her, pleased her and curled into her pint-sized back seat, I could see how her essence moved as mine did. That cosmic pull that led us to and from wherever Lavender was, her pointed index finger a north star that might finally bring us home. She played electric guitar, wore patches on her jackets and combat boots. She was everything about punk that I love dearly and had yet discovered; a garage rock baby who fought the man and me for Lavender’s undivided attention. And she won. I hated her for it. I hated Tegan and Sara for a whole year because of her.
         “The Con,” crashed its drums all over the inner-walls of my head like an omen, the beating of it, small prophecies never noted. We were in the maze and Lavender, she was unraveling herself with hymns that manifested like oranges being squeezed, their sap sticky and cascading down our arms. The two of us were enamored as she grinned through the notes, her bright teeth like ivory moons, while she let her hands talk for her too.
         She twirled and I fell into her dance as if my body had verily been there, as if my memory had not been that of her lover who met her with every stride and dip. The taste of reality was biting, the envy sour as it was swallowed and misplaced somewhere easily forgotten. Like my fury or pain should be disregarded by factuality. As if Lavender had not spent all her time pretending she could never be obtained – and yet. The surges of toxicity pulsed through my being like a beam of light trapped against mirrors, reflecting back and forth until all paths were blurred. And then, there was only one path and that path was me – a vessel of violent light. But I remained bottled and contained. I had thought. Because towards the finality of that year, her lover wrote me unexpectedly,
         “I always knew.” And I read those words seven times before I erased them, their tiny shapes disappearing nearly as quickly as they came. In muting their existence, I had hoped I would gain stillness, but my entire being shuddered. Each letter had led to another flip of my stomach and my loathsome jealousy turned to a lamented anchor that fell deep into me. So I never spoke to her again. Shame spiraled into fear and fear turned inward into a vexation for myself. I wondered what nerve I had to spin any story or dress up any half-truth, as if my infatuation with Lavender had been anything close to what they had shared. Infatuation. Ha! A desperation! – to be loved. By Lavender?
         Maybe.
         Lavender had become what I felt I should be. I would tinker away inside myself until my sap was sticky like fruit too. I could read more books, learn to talk in wisps and sing like canaries. I would let my hair fall golden, my lips could grow fuller, and I would mirror her until what was staring back at me, wanted to be seen. People would notice and turn for me, their faces in awe as my grace moved me to and from, as if my feet never really kissed the floor. They would hover with me, pulled by tethers into my space and they would love me.
         “Never leave me,” they would plead. They would want to love me. To be loved! That is all I ever wanted. To be understood. My body had windows with old shutters, timeworn and half-rotten, and the wild gusts of epiphany blew them open. To be loved by who then?
         To be loved by someone the way that I would love them.
         (Myself)