Sidewalk Solace

I kneel down on the hard, cold, grey concrete.
I cannot speak.
My chest feels tight. Feelings parallel to mine shine openly in the eyes of my classmates, whose names I do not know.
Salty tears, shed so freely. Familiar faces; unknown names.
The concrete we kneel on is just to the left of the front glass doors of our high school. A small, clear plastic bucket of colored chalk waits nearby, for any who wish to pay their respects in the same manner as my classmates, whose names I do not know. Red, yellow, green, orange, blue.
I watch them.
“How fast was he going when they hit?”
“I don’t know.”
I do not know his name. I do not know his story. I only know what I gather from words murmured around me.
“I can’t believe he’s gone.”
“Graduation’s only in a few weeks.”
“How could it have happened?”
“Was he just being careless?”
“No!”
“He was a responsible kid, he was never careless.”
“And he knew how to ride- he’s been on a motorbike since he was just a kid.”
I cannot feel them, or their words. They draw sad farewells on the concrete with the chalk in their hands.
I watch them.
I struggle within myself.
It has been a difficult year. Emotional and mental imbalance, stemming from the recurrence of a brain tumor, necessitated my extended absence from school mere weeks ago. Returning is an experiment, to learn if I can handle the stresses of public education. A desire to be free from the troubles of life has required a closer watch by responsible eyes. A hard working father, five hundred miles away, has had to leave that duty in the capable, caring hands of an overworked mother. She takes me to school and will pick me up at its end. The trip this morning is already gone from memory. I live each moment focused silently inward; time is slow poison.
And now this.
A moment before, I saw them mourning. The pressure in my head, my heart began to multiply. I deeply wanted to help them heal, to be a friend. Tears, honest and real as theirs, are locked up inside the tightness in my chest.
I feverishly open my yellow backpack. I gather out my binder of tattered loose leaf paper, then lower it to the concrete and open.
Taking a red piece of chalk from the bucket, I draw a quick line around the binder’s edge. I rise from my knees and turn away. I feel my classmates’ stares. I muster all the self-mastery I have left to not turn back to see whose eyes those looks belong to. Instead, I direct my feet toward the crosswalk. I do not know if I will return when lunch is done.
It is excruciating, sitting immobile with my noon meal before me, bound by the necessity to adhere to the unwritten laws of propriety, whilst the most precious item in my possession, my binder of words, lies open on the concrete mere yards away for any to glance therein- or steal, or deface, or destroy. I had no choice but to give it. I had to give something. It was the only thing that I could honorably have given. Something as emotionally powerful to me as their grief was to them, these classmates who I do not know the names of. Anything less would have made a mockery of their feelings. That was something I simply could not do.
My binder of poetry, with the most private, personal, precious words ever written by this hand, belongs to them now. It will be theirs for as long a time as I can endure. If I return to find its heart gone, so be it.
Lunchtime is done. My quaking body, beckoned by an aching, torn-up spirit, moves quickly back across the muted street. I stop. A painful walk forgotten.
What are they doing to my heart?
I look to the spot where I left it. Too slowly to quiet the dread building inside, I walk only as fast as my body allows me. Students still sit and kneel on the concrete. One of them lies on her side, cheek in hand. My binder, my poetry lies open in front of her.
How many have seen into my heart? What have they learned? What will they do?
She glances up at me as my steps come closer. I see her rise quickly and move away. I am disappointed, that her thoughts will never be voiced. I am relieved, that my heart has not been stolen, or defaced, or destroyed. I shakily gather the binder up and quickly place it back inside the yellow pack.
I have to endure my final two classes. They pass without any response. My mind holds only faces. In shock, it takes in physical details as sweet relief; my fellow children are suddenly so beautiful.
School is done. The front doors are before me, my arms pushing through. My chest becomes tighter. Another girl walks toward me, not faltering, on the very left edge of my peripheral vision. She is radiant, filled with some inner light. I know she has seen deep into me.
I am given no warning.
She reaches her fair, slender arms round me. I am bound.
I cannot breathe.
She whispers three words.
“I never knew…”