Eryn

Eryn licked cherry flavor from her lips. She hoisted her bag on her shoulder, balancing her umbrella in one hand and a clove in the other. Rain softly patted the roof of the umbrella. She placed the cig at her lips and inhaled. She held the smoke in her mouth fro a long moment, setting her head on the umbrella’s cold metal handle. As she exhaled, a cold wind blew through her coat. Her skirt billowed up around her thighs. She set the clove between her lips and gathered the coat more tightly around her waist. She snatched it down from her mouth just as the heat began to rise to her nose.

As the bus approached, she took one more puff. She flicked the remainder of the cig on the ground and stomped on it. The bus stopped in front of her. She blinked as the wet doors flew open. She swallowed hard, leftover smoke on her tongue, cherry from her lips, extemporaneous rain water. She tightened her grip on the umbrella.

“Ay, you gettin’ on or what?” The driver snapped.

Eryn looked up at the man. He was much too young to be so snippy.

She nodded.

She set one foot on the stair and closed her umbrella out the door. She slid a dollar into the machine and chased it with a quarter. Every seat and much of the aisle was taken. Eryn glanced around at the elderly immigrant women, the princes of the ghetto, and single mothers who nodded off between jobs, all headed for the crust of DC.

Eryn kept her head down, avoiding the eyes of the man and woman on either side of her. She clinched her fist around a metal bar over her head as the bus pulled away. She bit her lip, trying to catch between her teeth one of the thoughts that sped around her head. Her heart slammed itself against her ribs, harder with each tick of her watch. She preferred the time drip away without her, funnel down the sewer with the rain. But instead, it puddled up around her ankles and steadily rose, threatening to drown her.

Two blocks away from her stop, her throat filled with powder. She coughed and smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth.

A block away, she reached over a couple of seated passengers for the stop request string. She hooked her finger on the string.

Tears swam to her eyelids as she lowered her hand without tugging the string. The bus passed the cemetery, uninterrupted.

Eryn just watched the rain slide down the window.


Elliot opened the door after two knocks. He smiled until he saw Eryn dripping water on the wood floor.

“Eryn! What’s wrong?” He asked, enveloping her in his arms and ushering her inside. He closed the door behind them.

Eryn opened her mouth to speak, but exhaled. Her breath was cool on the bend of his neck. “I tried to go, but I couldn’t…I wanted to. I tried. I tried. I tried…”

She sat down on his bed, with the white sheets and blue blanket. She’d always told him to choose different colors for his bed; white could be so exposing and blue, so impersonal.

She held her face in her hands. Tears dribbled along her fingers. Elliot handed her a glass of water and sat beside her.

“You didn’t have to go,” he said, knowing that wouldn’t make her feel better. “But it’s honorable that you tried.”

Eryn sipped the water. It lay flat on her taste buds and slid down her throat without her noticing. She blinked, leaving her eyes closed as she swallowed. She opened them slowly, leaving them lowered to the floor.

“So now what do we do?”

She shrugged.

“How are you feeling?”

“Tired,” she sighed. Her head felt heavy.

Elliot pulled back his white sheets. He smoothed down his pillow. Eryn took off her coat and let her shoes clomp onto the floor. She curled up under his blue blanket. He joined her a few minutes later, leaving his arms to rest around her. Her eye lids had grown heavier. She burrowed her head more deeply into his pillow. It smelled of his sweat, and his sweetness.


When she uncurled her lashes, Eryn’s eyes focused on the ceiling. Elliot had managed to keep it clean, save a soot spot over the stove.

She turned over, facing Elliot, who still slept. She slipped her fingers through a few of the soft curls that framed his face, and kissed his forehead. He rustled awake beneath her lips.

“How are you feeling now?” He asked through a sleepy smile.

Eryn nodded an “okay.” She turned on her back. Outside, what was left of sunlight was fading into night. It still spat shadows of rain and rainbows on the ceiling.

She wouldn’t bother going back again.

She wondered what happened to the bodies in the ground when it rained.

She shook herself. She could never think about something like that.

She wouldn’t be going back.

Eryn lay her head on Elliot’s shoulder, wanting to lift the silence, but unable to find any words.