Sunset Eyes

They drift way too often for their good. Today conversations had taken them out of their class, confining them to the window, this window where they fully imparted their youth. Anyone observing would be too prideful to call it beautiful. They were just two wasteful young men.

“You’d do great man, I just know it.”

“Yeah if anyone would know it’d be you.”

The light of a declaration and the shadow of a response it formed. This is how things usually flowed.

"Like, how can you even be so sure about me anyway?"

"I'm sure because I know you. I know how much you can accomplish when you put your mind to it."

One boy with eyes in the dirt, doubting himself with the other picked him up. It was almost as if their existence gave the other more meaning like the sun and a shadow.

Then it happened. An azure blue entity tore through the skies as bright as the sky could see. It defined itself on the baseball field. It was a crater of impressive depth.

Before their eyes could’ve even properly comprehended it, they were there, at the scene.

“ It feels like it’s calling out to me.”

Like the sun as he reached out, so bright he neglected to consider the limit of his rays.

“No! Don’t touch it!”

The shadow he cast protested this as it wasn’t without its jagged edges, ready to stab at the sun. Revenge for it painted envy in his heart with its golden words.

The two stood still. They were petrifying the other with their gaze. Both believed the other was right but couldn’t help what they felt.

They couldn’t help but be guided by their feelings. This is why they both reached out and grabbed.

Success landed in both their hands as their palms met with the blade's hilt that made the crater.

Why did they reach out? To wound the other? To establish themselves as the dominant force?

Maybe it was because they were unfortunately just boys. Either way, the only thing that mattered was that they reached out and acted.

“God’s heart has plummeted to this wasteful garden. Rapture the heavens by piercing it.”

The blade spoke to them indiscriminately paying no heed to their petty rivalry.

The shadow immediately puked. The pressure must’ve been setting in.

“See what happens when you try to keep up with me?”

The sun did not waste the opportunity to chastise him.

“Shut up!” The shadow tried to hang on.

In this school, this time, this world where no one existed to intervene, they persisted. 

May-haps it was them that forced everyone into nonexistence.

“Maybe, I have something much more satisfying to kill than any God..”

The shadow being its strongest when overwhelmed by the sun honed in on this strength overpowering the other’s grip. He then mounted the other, towering over them with the murder tool.

He had made them the shadow. This was much like they had secretly dreamed it before now.

“We both know that you’d much rather stab yourself than me. Maybe it’s easier this way for you. Now that things feel a bit reversed. Now that you can feel like me. Now that you can look at me how you thought I always looked at you.”

Pathetic. Weak. Inferior. Undisciplined. Unworthy.

He trampled on the one who shared their light with him.

“It doesn’t have to be like this for us. Especially not because of them. Let us endure together. We will eventually stand stronger against them.”

The sun proclaimed as he cuddled his friend’s fist as he held the murder tool.

Them. God. Of course, it made more sense to hate them instead. It felt right.

So he decided to go along with this way of thinking.

But God endured. And the sun eventually set.

An overdose. One trip too many. In the end, it wasn’t hate or even as he would like it, “love” that defined him but the needle in his arm at the time of death.

At his usual spot, an abandoned school building in the neighborhood. This time without his shadow his true face shined bright without distraction.

Speed demons, the both of them. They had chased death with an almost darkly admirable tenacity as they persisted with destroying themselves. This was because death seemed like the only thing worth chasing in this world that appeared only fractured to them both. 

God, the blade, and everything in between their imagination concocted must've held a certain appeal because both waited with baited breath for the world to bend to their will. It felt earned after all they had endured, Coming both from broken households they, both saw the pieces they lacked in the other.

Funnily enough, the imitation— no, the shadow formed through peer pressure endured. His feet lifted from the ground. He flew on iron wings to the land of liberty. His parents thought it would've been developmentally better for him.

Not for themselves though, obviously, the abuse never stopped.

He did this leaving the sun in the dirt.

The scene of their many encounters, short as they may have been had taken a new form. They met as high school seniors though they turned to the needles to be free of those titles.

This carcass of a building, as if to mock everything the sun stood for, had risen again, shining light on new life and becoming the second home to many high school seniors in the years to come.

It might’ve also inspired others because something grew right alongside it. A small sapling that bloomed on days like today. 

This would not have gone unnoticed.

The shadow had been forced into the way of fire which eventually torched his iron wings. His demons brought him back to the ground.

The house they had rented over there was reduced to cinder. It burned passionately with two bodies inside.

The shadow of a man conveniently escaped the flames. He had decided to visit home on the night his house burned. He never wanted to fly anyway. He finally felt he had enough strength to correct history this way.

Plus the cops wouldn't understand so he couldn't bother sticking around to explain.

“ I knew you were lying. It’s because I’m me that I knew I wouldn’t do any good.”

He was far past the point of lamentation. Nirvana was what awaited as he found his way back to the needle.

“But you, the skies were yours. I always believed. You didn’t want me to think that you didn’t believe that was how it was, But I knew. I wasn’t so sure about anyone else, so now and then I do this. To let them know how you seemed in my eyes.”

He mumbled this as he lay there, lighter in hand.

 He set fire to the cherry blossom tree that grew parallel to the school building. It was a fine way to commemorate his first day back home.

A serial arsonist. The light pink petals hastily turned scarlet rudely interrupting the graduation just across the street.

The flames that burned so close to them etched into their minds for as long they lived. Strangely enough, so did the image of the hobo the cops arrested, as he cried with his tears slightly dampening the flames.