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It doesn’t matter how much you love a child. At the end of the day, there’s always something they can’t overcome. One chasm you can’t help them cross, hands clasped in delicate hands to precariously balance. Their weight will wobble from side to side, or their arm will strain as you hold them up, as their inexperience threatens to topple them over. Bill is set apart. He is detached. His gaze ever-forward, lost to a void of his imagination. His sparkling eye is clear and quick and always, always, looking away. What can soothe the ache of never seeing your son’s face? To see him grow, to see his angles sharpen, without the complete connection everyone else has with their child. He gets taller, more acute. He's clever and playful in equal parts, like his father. He sings like his mother, all creaky notes and trilling vowels. Scalene never got to hold her son. It was like trying to cuddle water with no bowl. He felt awkward and immaterial and bulky. No one could hold him, not really. The closest she ever got was when he was born, before the doctors started screaming about his shape and his eye and the buzzing sense of wrongness he emanated. And the next time she wanted to try, he was too old anyways. Euclid asks the doctors why Bill never faces his parents. They ask Bill why he stares into nothing. He says the nothingness stares back. He waxes poetic as soon as he can speak, desperately searching for words to describe what he sees. Singing about stars. Magmatic pinpricks of pure-white, sparkling clusters, apparently pulsing with life. Pulsing. They can’t even imagine that. What is pulsing? He says stars get smaller and larger, smaller and larger the longer he ponders them. They beat in time with the wind, the blood, and the universe. As if it breathes, as if it feels. Pulsing, his mother guesses, is like the gold of his skin. It is bright and rings with a harmonic resonance (not buzzing, never buzzing). It fills her with love, and with grief. Pulsing, she decides, is loving her son. The ebbing feelings of pain, guilt, and soul-crushing adoration.“You could never understand,”
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“I wish I could show you,”
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“When I close my eye, I feel hopeless,”
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“The stars are bigger than all of us combined,”
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“It’s more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen.” His father grits his teeth. You’ve never seen anything, he thinks bitterly. Deep down, Scalene agrees. She’s known Bill all his life. He’s never been part of their existence, their real life. He is frozen, facing forward. He doesn’t move like anyone else. If he does, he has to drag himself. He seems in pain with every move he makes. He scratches and pulls and shuffles. He moves like he’s held tight between two wooden boards, squeezing him from both sides. He moves like he’s trapped. He just stays still and stares away. She feeds him, speaks with him, even when he seems too far gone. Deep down, she hopes the stars he sees are more comforting than the emptiness they see. “I can’t keep living like this,” he sobs She tries to hold him. To touch his arms and kiss his face. He can’t face her. He strains, each muscle coiled and tense. He is still stuck. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I wish I could see you all. I wish we were free. I’m sorry I can’t love you right.” She hushes him and whispers sweet nothings. Says she’s never blamed him for being born this way. If anything it’s her own fault. She honestly wouldn’t blame him for getting lost in the stars, if he could move freely where they are. Bill slackens. He asks to be alone. Scalene can’t help but feel like she's losing him. Months pass. He seems more distant than usual. His eye is clouded and jaundiced and his pupil is thin. He looks pinched and desperate. He hears less than he did before. He doesn’t speak. She still sings for him. Sometimes, he almost hums along. His father runs to her one day. Screaming that her son is back, that he’s crazed, or deluded, to please do something. It’s too late. She finds her son sobbing and shaking, the ground around him disintegrating . Bill is lost in the throes of his spell. He had finally gathered enough strength. He had finally reached out. For the first time in his life, he could move. He remembered giggling and humming and at last nothing was holding him down, nothing was crushing him! He had tried to touch a star, but it burned and burned and now, all he can hear is screaming. His head is spinning and ringing, and he feels heavier than lead. He feels a sick swoop in his center as the world crumbles beneath him. None of the joy from before remained. He thinks he smells blood. His mother is here. He can barely see her blurry blue form in his peripheral vision. He laughs hysterically at the sight. His throat catches around bitterness, maybe fury. All of this and he still can’t see her. Blurry triangles. Red and blue. That’s all he’s ever seen. He can’t move his head, too consumed by the fear and confusion and pain surrounding him. He just wanted to show them the stars. He just wanted to be able to turn and actually touch her. Over the explosions and the awful screaming, he can hear his blubbering. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” He can hear a song faintly, the one his mother sings to him.
“I know we’ll meet again some sunny day!”
He can feel his mothers arms. He can smell her. He can even taste the salt from her tears, dripping onto him, as hot as the choking air around them. He doesn’t know what he’s done. He knew he was too different for his world. He just wanted to be free . What has he done? It wasn’t worth it. He feels ash tickling his arms. The terrible orange light behind him has shrouded the sky with sickly light. It looks like he's snuffed out the stars.