short story 'wyatt' - written by me

[ioanazine]

Hello everyone! I'm new to the forum so if anyone has any tips for better post formatting or anything like that, please lmk 

Here is a snippet of a short story I finished a few months ago but revisited recently --- any opinions would be highly appreciated!!!


Enjoy :) 



**

It is a strange feeling. To be the oldest you have ever been, and yet know nothing about life. It is strange to only fully know life when you are on the cusp of losing it for good. You have nowhere to apply that knowledge any longer, really. Why does it work this way? I think we can all ask ourselves that question about anything that has ever existed. Why does anything work the way it does? Is there a point in knowing? Maybe ignorance is as close as we can get to divinity. Maybe.

It is a strange feeling. To be seventeen, in that no-man’s-land between child and adult, and to discover yourself for the first time. Everyone always says teenagers are rebellious, but no one ever says why. Even though they were all teenagers once. I think teenagers are rebellious because we are finally dissecting ourselves and most of us don’t like what we find. When I first discovered who I was, it was at the hands of someone else. In the hands of someone else. I had been seventeen for a week and one day. The sun was setting, drowning under the horizon— dragging out its daily death. Like it didn’t know it would be reborn the next day. That week, Wyatt came home. I watched him walk from his dad’s Honda Civic to the door of his house, tattered duffel bag in hand. The car drove off immediately after he got out. He stood on his porch for a moment. Then he looked up, setting eyes on me. Like he knew I’d be there, sitting hunched over on my windowsill. Right leg hung off the edge, dangling like bait off a hook. Wyatt lived in the house next to mine. His white brick house standing parallel to my red brick one. Never to touch. We stared at one another in the cicada-hum silence. Communicating with our eyes things our lips would never be able to speak.

“Happy late birthday,” Wyatt said.
“Thank you.”  A pause. “How was your dad’s?”
He placed his hand on the nape of his neck. The softest part of him. Exposed. “The same as always.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” I brought both my legs to my chest, resting my chin on my knees. He picked up the bag, slinging it over his shoulder. A scuffed hand lay resting on the door handle. He took me in with full eyes.
“It was okay,” he said. Then, tentatively spoken, “Wanna hang out later?”
When I first discovered who I was, I was convinced I would stay like that forever. I wanted to be seventeen forever, to unfold myself like origami forever, for him, forever.  I wanted it too badly to give it a voice. I think that our deepest desires will fester within us until we die. We never want to admit how desperately we want. It is too revealing. So we die wanting. We die unfinished.
None of that occurred to me then, though. I had been seventeen for a week and one day, and I was eternal.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“Okay.” He smiled. “I'll see you, then.”
The door clicked shut behind him as he left. The sky was now a deep orange, embers in a forgotten hearth. I picked at a streak of dried paint on my sleeve. Wyatt came home, and things were back to normal. We could continue running circles around one another. Maybe, that was the closest to divinity I would ever get.


**