Carry My Heart

by Cooper, J. S.

  My name is simple. Daisy. Like the flower. Daisy. Like the nursery rhyme. Daisy. Like the last person on earth stuck on a deserted island. Daisy. Like being in a maze at night and the moon and stars are invisible. Daisy. Like being lost in space. Daisy. Simply Daisy.

  I am certain of three things in my life. I am certain that on days when the burden feels heaviest I am at my lightest. I am certain that the clouds are filled with giggling angels waiting to jump down into fields of roses. And, I am certain that the beauty of the ethereal night is the only time I can be truly happy.

  There’s a chestnut tree in the field directly behind my house. I like to go there on nights when I feel like I’m going to fall out of the sky. It’s comforting to run to the grand old tree, climb the rope and tire swing and glide back and forth in the wind. There’s a real thrill in knowing that I really could fall. There’s something satisfying in knowing that the fall would be real as opposed to in my head. I don’t remember much about the tree, but I know I’ve been there plenty of times before. I know this for two reasons. One is because Jake has told me so. The other reason is because my name is engraved in the bark. Along with a line from a poem, “I wandered lonely as a cloud.” Wordsworth is my favorite, or so Jake told me. When I go to the tree, it’s not that line that I look at, it’s the message engraved beneath. “You’ll never be lonely because I’ll always be by your side.” I don’t know who wrote it. I wonder if it’s Jake. I’m scared it’s not. I’m scared that it’s someone else. I’m scared it’s exactly who I think it was. I’m scared because I lost myself.

  I didn’t do it because I wanted to forget him. Not really. I didn’t want to forget late nights listening to him talk about the world and what he was going to do to change it. Well, he discussed and I tried to keep up. Jake was smart. Really smart. I watched him grow from someone like me, who enjoyed trashy TV and comics to someone who could do quadratic equations in his sleep. He studied Latin, he understood Latin, he knew what scintillation meant. He taught me what scintillation meant. We used it every time we saw the fireflies. Sometimes I’ll use it now, I think it would make him smile. I didn’t do it because I didn’t want him in my life. He was my Jake. My best friend. Only he was better than me. When I first started to realize I was scared. I was scared that he’d leave me behind. That I wouldn’t be necessary or important. But that wasn’t him. I was his life in a way I never fully understood. That didn’t stop the pain, when it came, of course. The pain, well it was excruciating. Feeling like you couldn’t breathe when you were just standing there. Feeling like your heart was being torn out of your body when no one was touching you. Not being able to eat. Not being able to think. Not being able to count to ten without thinking that your brain was being tested more than it should.

  I stare at the letters on the table, wondering what I’d read if I open them. I wonder if I’ll cry. I wonder if a spark of something will ignite in me a memory that will lead to other memories. However, I always just sit on the floor and hold myself tight, feeling empty, hollow, lost in my own head. Sometimes I just stare at the light bulb. I love it when it flickers at night. It reminds me of my one true memory. It reminds me of the fireflies. Scintillation.

  Jake feels deep worry, weird and scary thoughts, pain, striking jarring nerves in the pit of his stomach. He’s unsure, so very unsure of himself and of me. Yet, in all his uncertainty, there is no doubt in his heart that he loves me. His doubt, his doubt stems from himself, stems from his worry about life. He is worried about pain. Not the pain that comes when you prick a finger or scrape a knee. The pain that comes from inside. That feeling was an unfamiliar emotion to me. However, his anxiety controls my body when we’re together. It’s something I don’t always understand. His memories and his thoughts, they scare me, they scare me because they make me worry for him. My friend, my best friend. He’s so much deeper and darker than I’d ever have known. His inner thoughts, they’re scary. I know that inside he’s troubled and unsure. I know that he’s desperately trying to prove himself, trying to find himself, trying to understand what will make him happy. I know that as much as he loves me, as much as I’m all he lives for, I’m not enough to fix him. And I know that he knows it too. I also know that I don’t know that I want to fix him. I don’t know that I care.

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  Also by J. S. Cooper

  The Hookup

  The Forever Love Series

  The Ex Games