“What Lies Beyond the Boundaries”
 

What are you doing here?  It was unnecessary to repeat the question verbally.  Her wide cherry-black eyes shimmering in hope and confusion must have asked it all.  His chest was heaving as if he had just ran a marathon.  She could see the sweat glistening from his face under the streetlamps almost the way light shines off oil, clothes war-torn from the ripped stitches in his shoulders to the ragged, worn edges of his "Lee" jeans.  The black band that was soaked through on his forehead had its tails waving behind his chestnut spikes, caught in the wind.  First impressions would have only labeled him a punk, a rebel, a reject from the way of civil society, an unredeemable soul, and the lowest and foulest of any class; the way his dark eyebrows creased in a frown (one split horizontally from a scar given years ago), the band-aids that represented his recklessness stretched in a pair over his right cheek and across the bridge of his nose, the tautness in his pursed thin lips conveying the emotions that she knew were warring inside him.  But apart from his uncaring, destroyed attire, drooping buckles distractingly glaring from the light, his presence had always been outspoken, drawing attentions unwanted or unknowingly.  She could peel away the exterior, erase the harbored heavy lines of his grim life, past the barriers of cold hatred, regret, and pain, and bare the remains of his tattered soul.  And what she saw reflected inside the glassy brown orbs of his narrowed eyes wrenched her heart in a way that it made her own tribulations seem like rainbows and sunshine.  His soul wanted to give in; be crushed by the frustrations, be swallowed by the continuous battles that he faced each day, but his pride refused to relent mercilessly.  This was the side of him that he placed beneath the world’s spotlight, and what remained in the shadows were deposited unhesitatingly and trustingly into her hands.  The hands he once said were able to heal.

She gripped her fingers tightly around the handle of the plastic grocery sacks that she had been sent to obtain, harshly by her mother.  Heart stamping behind her ribcage, engulfing the passing engines of the cars on the highway below and the night sounds singing from the rustling trees and driveway bushes, until it felt her chest would burst from the held breath of anticipation.  Then finally his lips parted.

"I want you to come with me."  Words spoken from the heart.  She felt blown over by them.  Simple as they were, she could detect no emptiness nor lie; the power he had over her could bow mountains to the mightiest wind.  I want you to come with me… It was what her heart had wanted to hear, and listening as his unfaltering low baritone became a broken record in her mind she could also hear the desperation belying them.  But as soon as she started to believe, the nagging doubt whispered its poisonous words in her mind.  Not of what he confessed, but of what confidence she lacked in herself.  He must of noticed her hesitation.  His lean figure drew closer over her; an intimidating height to others.  Her eyes stared at his loose black boots.  The weight of his eyes on the top of her head was becoming unbearable and obvious.

"Please," he whispered.  "I need you to come with me.  I won’t leave this place without you."

"But you know I can’t." she replied matter-of-factly.  "It’s impossible."

"Nothing is impossible."

"Everything is impossible!  No matter where we go, no matter how much we want to escape, reality will only rip us away from our foolish desires and from each other-"  A surprised gasp tumbled from her lips as he firmly gripped her shoulders, and her eyes shot up toward his face.  It was an unintentional mistake, and as soon as her cherry-black connected with his light-brown, they melted into their intensity.

"Are our desires really that foolish?"  She inwardly winced at the spark of hurt in his voice.  Adding to the bruises that already covered his heart was not what she had intended.  She only wanted him to understand.

She had also endured a life of hardship almost equal to his own.  Slaving away since she was six beneath the pressuring foot of her mother who refused to work and lazed about the house like a cat beneath the sun, nothing she had ever done seemed to please her.  She would smile and answer respectfully to her mother’s waspish requests, flinching from the building blisters that would close and reopen the next day as she forced them into scalding waters to wash the ever-dirty apartment they accommodated.  With the world becoming competitive money was of course hard to come by; a story never new to anyone.  She held three jobs, simple but unfulfilling, and while her father basked in a rich life in North America they were forced to survive alone, if not at all.  Rainbows and sunshine to his overwhelming darkness.

It wasn’t that their desires were foolish, she must admit that it was wrong to proclaim it as such.  It was the limitations that such desires held that would restrict them from ever passing the boundaries of reality.  The freedom that they yearned from their depressive situations was as unreachable as the stars above.  With these thoughts her doubts grew stronger preparing to lock the window of dreams and opportunities, and confine her in her prison for the rest of her lifetime.  Suddenly, it froze.

Warmth covered her left cheek, rough textures pressing into the soft flesh, and then she felt his thumb caress her gently to distract her from her reveries until she noticed that she had been staring at him without truly seeing him.  He watched her as intently as before, but something had been misplaced.  The cold barriers were gone.  Her eyes went wide, openly displaying her shock.  His light brown were still transparent revealing his soul to her, and yet the passionate warmth that had replaced his deadened feelings glowed with radiant confidence and belief.  There is nothing that I can’t do.  That is what they said to her, and his presence embraced her in comfort and protection.  I want you to come with me… 

In her entrancement, she unacknowledged the doubt that had been eating at her, infuriating it to the point that it raged wildly, clawing at the shield that he had put around her.  Its flesh began to peel away; a rotting corpse of pale loose skin and grinning skeletal teeth, frame melting into a gangly thinness until the bones protruded obtrusively. 

Without her lack of belief it could not exist, but the only reason it partially remained was because there was still uncertainty.  But what about my life here?  I can’t just leave my mother like that.  I would be no better than my father.  Have you ever been given the chance to be selfish for once?  The doubt screamed as it’s existence shattered into a million particles of dust. 

In the next moments, her arms were wrapped tightly around his neck, squeezing her tiny lithe frame into his lean one with her detached mind registering belatedly that her body had moved of its own volition in her realization.  Never had she been able to be selfish before because most of her life had been spent doting upon her mother’s unsatisfied greed.  This was her only chance.  She still felt the limitations but the will to surpass them had never been stronger.  Her other self held up the chair she had been seated in since the beginning of her uncertainty, and unhesitatingly swung it into the closed window to send it careening along with broken glass to the rocky floor below. 

"Take me with you.  I don’t care where, just take me with you."  No other words were passed.  He took her hand in a firm grasp, and they ran.