So while everyone else is doing their top ten xyz of the year, there has been one song that has absolutely haunted me all year and that is "The Bomb” by Florence + The Machine. If you follow me at all you know this song absolutely froze me in place at first listen, so I HAD to write a piece inspired by it.
You come back every summer like a carnivorous flower.
April doesn’t know why she let him back into her life. It was someone reliable at least. Every August, always after her birthday, he shows up. It always begins with a text.
“Are you up?” She was always up. He knew that. He knew her mind was hard to turn off. Knew she tossed and turned every night. She was restless. He knew everything about her. Had since they were kids.
She would answer the text. She couldn’t even leave him on read. His message would be sent at 9:08 and she would respond at 9:08.
Drosera Capensis
That’s what he was; Drosera Capensis. She remembered learning about the plant in school. It was a gorgeous plant. Green and red and beautiful. Its tips were dripped in honey. Its smell was sweet, promising, dazzling. It wrapped around its prey like a hug. It enticed it to come close. Its mouth whispered sweet nothing to the little bugs.
“Hug me closer”
“Wrap me in your arms”
“I am a safe Haven”
Then it attacked. It squeezed the life out of the poor, innocent, willing bug. Its poison corroded the creature from the inside out. Until all that was left was an empty husk. Until that to was destroyed.
Drosera Capensis.
Sundew.
When he was in front of her, when he was back like a vision, like a nightmare, like a mirage caused by the summer heat, she knew he was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Long ago, he told her that she was the best thing that ever happened to him. They spent long winters sipping on hot chocolate and rolling through the snow. They watched the stars together. Mapping them out constellation by constellation. He would tell her that he would one day write his own name in the stars.
He would be immortal.
In a way he was right. She couldn’t even kill him in her own dreams. In the darkest recesses of her mind, she still held his hands. Warmed from the heat of the fire or the sun. Warmed from the hearth of their connection.
They met when they were young. They were on the run. He found her first. She was scared and alone, he was there. Like a knight in gleaming white armor. He understood her.
Their parents didn’t get them. Wouldn’t get them. So, they became everything the other needed. They kissed their own scars. He used to comb her hair for hair using moisturizer they stole out of Walmart.
He said that their family was the best thing that ever happened to him. He didn’t need anything else. He promised love and family and home. For years they were all the other knew.
He found them a home, someplace they didn’t require much from them. Jeremiah taught April himself. He said they did not need teachers if they had each other. She agreed, eager to please him, scared to be left alone.
Then he left.
He decided they weren’t what he wanted. He fled like a thief in the night, leaving behind a shattered girl. Leaving her with no answers, just a crater where he had once been.
So, she moved on. April gathered her strength. She rallied. She was a soldier, and she returned half her weight. She didn’t need him. He wanted to destroy what they could have had. She would let him. She went back home.
April became successful. She took the shattered edges and glued them back together. She went back to school. She weathered her time back with the family she had been born into. It couldn’t be worse than it was before. Her father couldn’t hurt her any worse than he had. He couldn’t abandon her any more than she had already been. Her edges couldn’t get any sharper.
When she graduated high school, he came back. It was the start of summer. It was the start of this game that they would play. The start of this dance she had memorized. He set the moves and she followed.
Jeremiah told her he was proud of her. He showed her the binder he had kept of her accomplishments. He had a scrapbook. Announcements of her college acceptances. Awards she had one. Sports teams she had played for. He even kept scraps of her school’s championships, teams she hadn’t been on in the first place.
That summer before her freshman year of college they were attached at the hip. It was like he had never left. They went to the fair. He taught her to fish. He would guide her hand on the pole. He told her to be patient. That the fish would come when they were ready. If they moved too quickly the skittish animals would be spooked.
Maybe he was like those fish he warned her about. Easily spooked.
He disappeared again the day before she left for college.
If I was free to love you….
She moved across the country. She moved somewhere his presence had not tainted. And she was happy. She made friends. They had no expectations of her. They respected her mind for the force it was. They asked her for help. They let her lead the way.
When she met Levi, she knew she could probably love him. He was full of life. His dark hair was in such contrast to the blonde she was used to. His green eyes reflected an ocean more beautiful than the blue eyes she had known before. (The ones she used to associate with the freedom of the sky.) He wanted to show her the world. She was scared he would give it to her too. He promised her something permanent.
Why couldn’t she accept it?
Why couldn’t she let him hold her? Why couldn’t she hold Levi back?
The end of her freshman year brought Jeremiah back to her. He came with his scrapbook. He must have known that she was close to happiness. He must have known that a new life was within her reach. Why else had he come to tear apart her life?
She let him in of course.
And it was more of the same. He charmed her. Then he burned her up and tossed her away. He took the foundations she had laid and tore them up from the ground.
He tried his best to devastate everything in her life. He enjoyed it. He wouldn’t stay if she wanted him to. He wouldn’t stay if she begged him to. And he would keep coming back.
How would he know to stop? She was always there for him. Arms wide open, begging for him to hold her. Begging for him to love her back. Praying that if she jumped, he would catch her. Laughing as she soared through the air, sure that his arms would wrap around her and pull her close.
Crying when her bones shattered against the pavement instead.
Heaving when he would leave her to collect her pieces again.
And again.
Junior year. She was supposed to go out of the country with Levi and his family. She stayed home.
And again.
Senior year. She was offered a summer internship. One that would establish her career. She could have it all. She stayed home. She stayed with him. For him.
And every time she jumped, a part of her knew he wasn’t going to catch her.
He was there to blow apart her life.
He was there to make the buildings fall.
She knew this.
She loved him though, didn’t she?
She loved him.
She just loved the bomb.
Jeremiah was nuclear.
This time she wasn’t going to let him come back. This time that text was going unanswered. This time she was going to turn over and plug her phone back up. She would call Levi in the morning. She would be present with him. She wasn’t going to be Jeremiah. She wasn’t going to let him back in her head.
Sometimes you get the good, sometimes you get a song.
Go Stream Florence + The Machine! Also, you would not believe how badly I needed to get something out before the end of the year! See y’all next year readers!
P.S If you notice any stories on this Exquisite Entires that are no longer available, it is because I am submitting the pieces to be published so they cannot be public anymore!
Nothing worse than an exhausting person/life fr
I always hope the “this time” is the last time for the person’s sake
Was waiting on another entry and can’t wait for next year’s ones :)