Terminal Hiraeth

A school of orange-bellied clouds swam over the glare of the Colorado sunset. Muscular heat suffocated the earth where they sat on that outcrop near the summit of Red Mountain. His head was sweating. Her pale skin pink and burning.

“May I touch you?” he said.

“Where?” said Charlie.

“Where do you think?”

“Sullivan!”

“It’s just that—well—I want to disappear.”

“Me too,” she said.

He touched her and she touched him and for an immeasurable moment they were gone away from this world and its troubles.

***

They lay naked on top of their clothes. Tears grew in her grey eyes.

“What is it, Charlie?” he said.

“We’re only twenty-three—and we’re dying,” she said.

“We always were.”

They sat up and stared at the dusty horizon thinking of everything. They wished they understood why they were dying.

“I’m afraid to die, Sullivan.”

“I know. Me too. More than dying, I’m afraid I lived the wrong life. Like maybe as I’m dying I’ll realize I did it all wrong.”

“I hate it when you say that. There’s nothing noble about beating yourself up. Remember the night you gave me the locket? Remember what you told me to remind you whenever you get anxious? You said to remind you to get out of your hea—”

“Head and remember that I am a three dimensional creature in a three dimensional world. I know I know. I remember.”

In their eyes blossomed a pure smile. Pure because it wasn’t contrived. Because it approached telepathy. Because it needn’t words to say everything.

The locket. Heart-shaped. Not much bigger than a coin. But inside, the painting of their daydream forever home nestled in tall undulating grass on the side of a hill. And in the distance, the lighthouse. The one they swore exists in this world and the next. They made it up one day over waffles. A beacon in the real world and in dreams. It has always existed and always will. And because of the lighthouse, though they may get lost, there remains the chance they might find their way back. He painted it using a magnifying glass. Their Shangri-La inside the tiny trinket.

“Once, when I was feeling afraid,” he said, “someone told me I was dead for millions of years before my life, and I would be dead for millions of years after. For some reason I found that comforting.”

“That was me, silly. I stole it from somewhere.”

Inside Charlie’s and Sullivan’s blood the virus was busy changing them, making them weaker, making it easier for them to die young.

“Do you think we’ll go to heaven?” she said.

“Of course. I already have a place picked out. It’s a big round house with a wide open floor plan just like you wanted. Very exclusive neighborhood too. A lot of the streets up there are paved with gold. I told Saint Peter that simply wouldn’t do. He pulled some strings and secured us a spot in a gated community where the streets are paved with diamonds.”

She breathed a laugh from her nose and rolled her eyes.

She said, “do you think we feel the same about death as someone old—because we have only a few years left to live? Or is it different because we’re so young?”

“Like, are we more afraid because we’re young? Or is everyone just as afraid once death is so close?”

She nodded.

“I don’t know.” His eyebrows shrugged. “I’m sure it’s a little different when no one is tossing around words like ‘tragic’ about your situation. No one ever says, ‘they died tragically of old age’.”

For a moment she laughed. Her laughs turned to sobs. He put his arm around her—held back as long as he could—then he too cried.

They wept there together, tiny on that big rock. A minuscule silhouette aquiver against lavender twilight.