'You Might As Well Jump' by Mari Maxwell

Sometimes the only way to go is head over heels.

Free fall.

Down the chute.

Feel the wind upon your face, rustling hair and stagnant thoughts until the moment of entry.

Crisp. Clear. Clean. Focused. All the richer for it. All the better.

That is how Melody went.

Not that Brian had meant it so.

“Everyone knows it’s just the way I am,” he’d tried explaining. “You see it’s not really me. It’s just the way things are.”

The things.

It wasn’t the stalking, late night hang-ups. The unsigned, typed letters. The smothering clench of arm, shoulders when strolling along cliff’s edge. Or even the demands for more time when only home after a weekend away. The candlelit dinners when Melody had to gaze, mesmerised by the many voices of one.

Besotted, he was.

Brian hadn’t meant that. It’s just the way he was.

Unable to see.

Unable to feel.

Melody felt. Acutely felt the slide of knife, pressure, a burning, metallic bubbling, gaining momentum as Brian melded blade to flesh. After the champagne was drunk, the loving was done. The knifepoint Tête à Tête.

Not that Brian had meant it so.
It’s just the way he was.

Melody sailed. Floated almost. A dart to left, then right, and over the cliff edge. Head over heels. Arch of back. Flight of a bird. A cut through foam, then up, up, up. Ash blonde tendrils, snaking through the waves, bobbing on the surface.

“Take your f’ing ring,” she’d screamed. “Love isn’t this. Possession. Obsession.”
“Love just is.”

And it was.

For Melody.

Not Brian.