A Sad Short Story

Disclaimer: To give you some background, I wrote this about my friend from high school who threw away everything good she ever had... she let her life simmer down into just a sad short story.

She rolled up a piece of temporary happiness and inhaled smoke from the ember tip. Her eyes eased closed as she coughed and exhaled all her aspirations for life. Flicking the ashes to start the fire that burned her history and calculus books. Warming her hands by the flame her eyes glaze toward the sky, fixating on a flickering star, dreaming of being twenty-one. A rusty, worn lawn chair on her front yard, feet kicked up, she was floating. Another failed bonfire faded into a memory and the rejection from her grounded friends was currently forgotten. Assurance from her temporary acquaintances, that feel like best friends, make her chair become a spaceship, soon soaring among the stars.

The moon loved her and the big dipper sang her to sleep. Orion’s belt held her close and told her she was beautiful. She lost thirty pounds and was the most charming when she danced along the Milky Way. All the asteroids laughed at her jokes and the space listened for hours to her secrets.

The sun came up and her stomach growled. The embers were gone and all smoke exhaled. She woke up to half burned books and misplaced homework. She found the thirty pounds she lost the night before and the added weight of her disapproving friends. All that was left were the people who would share her secrets with the world and the not so funny things that she laughed so hard at last night.

It doesn’t feel right; she would rather dance among the stars, and why not? Her weak heart hides her in the world in which she doesn’t have to pretend to succeed, a world that unquestionably loves her... but a temporary world.