27. Sicily
SICILY
It was like fire, like being burned alive, except there was no fire, no crackling flames, just the warmth of my own blood leaking down my collarbone and too many people screaming.
The sky was rolling in waves of blues and whites, some dark and some light, just like paint. It was the prettiest canvas I’d ever seen, but I couldn’t make out what painting it was supposed to be, though I knew it was calm.
For once it wasn’t an angry painting.
The stars appeared after that, painted onto the face of someone standing before the canvas. They were falling down their cheeks, glittering. They were the prettiest person I’d ever seen. Who were they?
“Sicily, stay awake,” they panted, pulling me against their warm body. They smelled familiar, they felt like somebody I knew too, but my brain was too dizzy to think, my eyes too blurry to remember. “Come on, angel, look at me.”
Loud shots startled me, but this person pulled me closer. They wanted to keep me safe even when I felt lost and there was too much inside me that hurt.
“Someone help me!” they screamed, their hand wrapping around my throat.
The burning stopped when they did that, and I wanted to stay like that, to bury into them tighter, to be closer, to close my eyes.
“Do not close your eyes, Sicily.” They tapped my cheek, but I frowned, turning my head away. “Sicily, please. Please.”
They were heavy, my eyes. I wanted to listen to them, I really did, and I tried, but I couldn’t.
The person made a loud sound, something like a scream and a roar all at once. It was deep, like they were warning the entire world about whatever was bothering them. They sounded so far away, and I wanted them to stay with me.
I smiled when they pressed their head against mine, though their body shook and their face was covered in stars. They were so beautiful, but they held my hand to stop me from reaching up and touching them, so I just stared at them instead.
“You promised,” they said, their voice raspy and broken. “You promised you would stay.”
I opened my mouth to say sorry, that I didn’t know how, that I wanted to, but I was so tired and my throat burned when my lips moved.
The paint began to smudge in the sky and their hands on my body felt numb, so I just stared at them and began to count the stars.
They whispered something into my ear, but I couldn’t hear them, couldn’t hear anything, but when I closed my eyes, I did hear their screaming once more.