bartelsc – (moment)a divided

I sat in the silence of eternity and imagined she was there with me.

She would put her hand on my shoulder, absorbing sorrow and grief and guilt. But pain would hold fast and steady.

“You know,” she would say, the whisper of ageless remnants echoing loudly through the creaks and moans of time, “you can just let go. At any time, you can just let go.

She would speak of things she could not know, could not even guess at. She would hint at desires longed for and nameless. She would be both unable to comprehend and, more dangerously, capable of relaying with a terrifying certainty.

I would look her in the eyes and lament. I would cry out in my mind with voiceless fury. I would wither and shrivel and compound and destroy. I would internalize. I would die.

“Easier said than done, I’m afraid.” I would say with false confidence. One phrase, two ideas. As powerful together as they are meaningful when separated.

She would squeeze my hand.

I would sigh.

She would vanish.

I would remain.

I will always remain.

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Added March 22, 2016
This is one of my favorite entries into my “moment” series. At the time of THIS writing, the rest aren’t present, but they will be, eventually.

Added April 12, 2017
The final (moment)s story is now present and since it’s a completed series I made it possible to view them all by using the “Category” option on the side of the screen.
Just read through all of these, in order, for the first time since I wrote this one, over two years ago. I’m proud of them, even though that funeral one is mostly junk.
I should write something to tie them together.
I should never do that.

Facebook – (moment)o mori

Alone in the cold and dark unpleasantries of the present my mind wanders. Between the sheets of wedded discontent, I think back to a winter’s day from another life, from another time.

 

To another girl.

 

She’d said to me, then:

“Time is a figment of pure human invention; one of the most horrifying monsters ever conjured up. It finds, unifies, and destroys. It is life and death.”

 

The snow fell hard, that day, eliminating the sky, the ground, and the line between with a fast, white blur of deception. The cold was more harsh than the one she’d left behind in her wake.

 

I can recall, even now, the last thing I remember her saying to me, that day:

“Time will rip us apart in the end, you know.”

 

 

I had smiled, looked to her, and shrugged.

“But time will keep us together, too.”

 

 

I’d squeezed her hand, and she’d kissed my cheek. The warmth from our hearts met and stayed as one until her final goodbye; stayed with me until her final departure.

 

Those were moments that remain, timeless in nature. Despite being a malicious monster, Time doesn’t destroy everything. Sometimes the things that are most important, yes.

 

But not everything.

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Added April 12, 2017
Not gonna toot my own horn, but I love these “moment” stories and will never alter my stance on them. Haven’t produced one in a long, long time, though. Only the stupid funeral one stinks. The rest are little nuggets of pure simplicity.

Facebook – Final (Moment)

She lays there and I confess. I spill all, in front of family, loved ones, friends, strangers, and God himself. I confess.

A whisper, at first:
“I love you…”
It falls from me without even an ounce of effort.

Then a voice fills me, strong… lasting… destructive:
“I love you.”

The time in which such things mattered, of course, departed long before all roads led to this place, this spot, this moment.

Mistakes made of rushed dreams.
And when they bury her in the next few hours, I will find myself left wanting… I will want for her.

For Sally, the one true bright star in this incessantly bleak world…

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Added September 22, 2016
So, in the Sally stories, she’s a drugged out, pathetic, self-loathing hole in reality. In these, she’s some ideal, some pedestal worthy being.
The contrast that would be here, the thing that thus connects the two, is the idea that one person can in fact be both things.
That’s what I was going for, anyhow.
I don’t know as though it would ever come across without me saying it out loud. It certainly doesn’t in what I’ve produced thus far.
Alas.
I think this one was trying too hard.

Facebook – A (Moment)o; A Treasure

She and I had grown up together, dreamed together, lived together, loved together.

Sorrow is this, defined:
Being with that One Person and never having a chance to hold on to them and share with them your everything.
This is sorrow. This is what it means.

One summer day at the height of the thermometer, alone – as we always were – she’d said to me:
“Sorrow, as I see it, is being alone, even with you’re with that One Person.”
She would sigh, then, letting “it” out in more ways than one. She continued:
“And shame, you know, is never being able to admit it.”

“What is happiness, then?”

From the corner of her eye she’d seen something in the distance, distracting. Away, far from where we stood together, she saw it and let it go. Or perhaps it was never there. Then, she turned back to me:
“You’re happiness.”

That is an instance in which words are defined.

Later that night, windows down, hair blowing out with the breeze, disregard for the troubles of the world… that was when I’d fallen in love with her.

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Added September 22, 2016
Had to replace the original image but thankfully there is no shortage of black-and-white photos of girls with their faces turned.

Facebook – (Moment)arily Devoid of Guilt

We were one, once, imbued with warm imbibed courage as we were, silly and drunk on the day and – most importantly – on the night. She sat close, the warmth of the air and the night and the alcohol connected us in foul ways… dangerous ways.

Hair a mess, wild and free, she rested her head on my shoulder and pulled the blanket tighter.

“Hey,” I’d said, my voice dulled and lost amidst the ocean of bad ideas that surrounded.

Another swig, then:
“Yeah.”

Downing troubles until nothing was left but empty bottles on the coffee table, I pulled her closer to me and we met each other, there, with the hazy din and the lights low around us, memories fading as quickly as they formed; a magic mysterious and dark in its own right.

Later, she would inform me that:
“fulfillment, you see, is the feeling of being content and complete.”

The two of us would stare into the ever-present nothing and I would nod my head, thinking back to that night, and I would say:
“Oh, I’ve known that for a long time.”

Pause. “Tell me something I don’t know, for once.”

A sideways glance and a gentle hit in the shoulder. A smile and a scoff.

A girl I once knew.

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Added September 22, 2016
This one is my favorite. I love that ending. Its at once heartwarming and heartbreaking.
I don’t write much that I think is perfect, but this is one such item.

Facebook – Forward (Moment)um

At some point she stopped.

It wasn’t choice, nor fate.

Nor was it the work of God.

At the end of the day… at the end of it all, she just stopped.

 

I remember how she’d said to me:
“Because we dare,” she’d said, “we die.”

Because I dared…

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Added September 22, 2016
Simple and sweet.
I’ll comment more on the series, here.
I did this group of them and then quit. Kinda like the Sally stories, themselves. Every once in a great while I’ll have some emotion bubble up to the top and out they’ll come.
An example is here:
https://skylerbartels.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/bartelsc-momenta-divided/
Its from Jan. 2015, so coming up on two years ago, but five years after the first entries in the series.
I dunno. They are over-written little messes, but I love them and will inevitably produce more.

Facebook – Just (Moment)s Ago…

“Hey,” she’d said, red hair lingering in mid-air; an illusion made possible by that late-August breeze.

“Yeah?”

Mind raced, I had pondered all the things I wish she’d say:
“You’re my best friend”;
“We get each other, you know?”;
“Hold me”;
“Kiss me”;
“Tell me that you love me”;
“Let’s never be apart”;
“Be with me”;
“Forever.”

She turned to look at me:
“It’s getting dark out.”

“And cold.”

She smiled. “Let’s go.

---

Added September 22, 2016
The second weakest “(Moment)” after the funeral one, I think.

Facebook – A (Moment)ary Lapse in Judgment

She said that everything was fine, or better yet, let me start from the start:

There we were, just the two of us, sitting – isolated as we were – apart from what we felt was the rest of the world. I smiled and drifted, mind washed clean of all things that were material and immaterial at the same time. Attention back to her as she started to lay, arms crossed in front of her, staring up at the sky like it was something she was owed. She couldn’t grasp it, she didn’t try. She just stared.

I wanted to reach out and hold her, tell her I would lift her weight and carry her sorrows. I wanted to smile and laugh with her, talk and comfort her. But I knew, down in those dark, nefarious reaches of the human soul, I knew I had my own weights that were in dire need of lifting. In dire need of some kind of… respite. Resolution. Dreaded resolution.

Instead, I simply waited, and watched, and weighed again and again the burdens my shoulders struggled to carry. If her’s were any different, they’d topple and drown. If they were the same, they could stack, be made comfortable and become one with the issues and the aches and the “son-of-a-bitch” days that cease only when forgotten, never truly gone. But there was no way of knowing. Never could be. Not without the doorway a question can provide.

“If I were to ask you,” I said, “if everything is fine, would you tell me the truth? Or lie and tell me everything is fine?”

She paused, held herself in mid inhale, looked sideways at me (which is all she’d ever done) and then leaned up slightly, holding her knees with her arms.

“Everything is fine,” she lied.

Heaven is not but a place within the imagination of those with sins in their hearts and sins on their minds. Sally had always said it best when she would utter the phrase: “We are the hell we make for ourselves.”

Even now, all these years later, roads traveled and lives lived, I remember Sally’s never-ending blaze, set against the sky of a setting sun. The flaming red contrasted so well.

To burn out then, as she did, well… that’s the whole story in the end, isn’t it?

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Added September 22, 2016
The first in the “(Moment)” collection, these are about a female character named Sally, the same one from the following:
https://skylerbartels.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/facebook-the-cantankerous-misadventures-of-sally-misanthrope-hayrbauble/
Though there is never any direct connection.
I love all the stories tied to Sally and would that I could make a full story or a collection, someday.