Conversations With an Angel

Written: 4/2/23

It’s a quarter till five. Melon-yellow fronds of waist-high grass dance and ripple around the bench I’m occupying. Brown mountains paint themselves into the horizon. A set of trees brew in the distance, shadowed, scads of colored light passing through their branching silhouettes. The sky laughs, its searing colors tincturing the east. It laughs with something brilliant, something larger than life.

Its glaring, blood-gutted colors wash over the left side of my face as I realize I have the whole park to myself. Of course, just as the thought passes my mind, I look over my shoulder and see a woman walking over to me, her burnished-black heels clattering behind.

Her head makes a slight tilt to the side. She’s smiling. The old black dress she’s wearing makes it look like she just stumbled out of a funeral home. Though she possesses a certain sweet and saintly quality that I’ve never seen before. And she’s familiar—very, very familiar.

I move to make room for her and she sits down beside me. The run-down bench we’re sitting on creaks as she drops her weight on it with a thunk. She doesn’t seem to care.

“Beautiful morning,” she says as I shrink in my seat. Her voice is full and lovely. I’m surprised; I haven’t been so taken aback by someone’s grace in a while. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?” I murmur in response.

She’s something yoked from a pleasant dream, a happy memory.

I breathe deeply as I watch her in silence. Her fingertips drum against the smooth, pale knees that poke out from under her dress. She’s wearing a silver ring on her right hand. Her fingernails are painted a dark red.

I take note of the way her head drops to the side whenever she smiles; it’s charming. A sweep of dark hair falls into her face. She tucks it back behind her ear. A husky breath of wind almost sends her hair and black sundress flying, if not for her reaching hands. She opens her violet handbag and her fingers carefully pull out a box of unlit cigarettes. Her smile soars.

A pocket knife lays limp in my open palms. I don’t know why it’s there or how I plan to use it. For now, it only stares back, its corners catching the light of the sun. My hands grow heavy with its presence. There’s a certain warmth I feel as it sits, cusped in the pink, tender folds of my hands.

The woman lights herself a cigarette, her thin bare shoulders creeping out from her black dress. “People consider it sad, but losing someone you love is a strange experience, really. It’s painful, yes, but you come out of it as a new person. But only in most cases.” She sighs as she says this, smoke eluding her lips as she breathes out. “Some people just can’t move on.” I don’t know how this conversation has come about. “With all due respect, why are you telling me this?” I have an idea of why, but I brush it off.

The woman shrugs. “Beats me.” She exhales, the bottom half of her face hiding in bogs of gray smoke. I don’t know what to say. I think of asking for a cigarette myself, but the idea escapes me.

The faint barking of a dog occupies the gaping silence. We sit like this for a few minutes as I am perturbed, musing on her buoyant blur of a presence.

“There was this girl,” I say, finally. “You remind me of her.” The words bubble up and out of my throat like someone has drawn them from me against my will. She lets out a soft laugh. Her lips are a sweet somersault of red. “Do I?” She asks, intrigued. She doesn’t look pleased or annoyed, simply puzzling.

“Hm, so you’re saying there was this girl? I’ll assume that this girl you knew is dead.” She puts emphasis on the word dead.

I scoff. “You can’t be serious.”

“Is she?” She presses on.

My silence speaks for itself.

She leans back in her seat, crosses her legs, and lets out a sigh. “They say grief is a medicine of its own. I don’t know, though. There are people out there who just can’t recover from loss.” She tilts her head to the side. “How long has it been since—”

“Six years.” Pictures, snapshots of us flash in my mind. I force my eyes shut; it’s painful to remember. “If you’re still grieving, then, I guess you’re helpless,” she sighs.

I open my mouth to speak, but I can only watch as her gaze makes its way over to the weapon sitting in my palms. “The knife,” she begins, “what’s it doing on your lap?” Her voice grows quiet. It took a while for her to notice it. “I don’t know,” I say. The girl stares, disappointed. It’s like she knows I’m lying.

“You came here to take your life, didn’t you?”

I chuckle. “How’d you know?”

She gestures to my pocket knife. “You’ve made it obvious, with that thing sitting right there.” She isn’t smiling. She shoots me glare like she’s known me for quite a while and the idea of me taking my life is somewhat of a sick joke.

I feel disappointed in myself, in the fact that I lied. She has a way of making me feel guilty. And I should have felt guilty.

“Well, sorry, I don’t know, really, I—”

She leans in and whispers in my ear. Her whispers are sharp gusts of wind, gales, prayers. I can’t interpret anything she’s saying. She pulls away, her expression dying into melancholy. My chest burns.

“This girl,” she starts, bringing her cigarette to her lips, “what was her name?”

Natalie, I want to say, but her eyes are already rapt. It’s like she already knows. She lifts her chin to meet my gaze and her brown eyes melt and turn to glass. She slowly brings her hand to mine, reaching for the pocket knife on my lap. Her thumb twiddles with it, retracting its blade. Her breath fogs the back of my neck.

“I don’t understand,” I swallow.

She looks away. “Don’t do this, please.”

Suddenly it all comes back to me: her habit of tilting her head when she smiled, the warmth of her small hands instilling into mine as she held them, the way she could go on talking for hours, our scattered violet shadows meeting on stretches of tall yellow grass, her cosmic red lips: Natalie.

She sets her head on my shoulder. I blink and my eyes fill with tears. She lets out a final breath of gray smoke, swallowing her body whole. When it vanishes, she disappears, and I am left feeling hollow. I still feel as though I can trace her with my fingertip.

I pocket my knife.

My face crumples.