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Garbriel was an Angel
The first person that ever loved me was an angel. He was God's finest creation, but under my child's hands he broke. Does that make me a sinner? I destroyed an angel. Angels roam the universe as unguided as mere mortals, and they love and hurt and hope just as mortals do. They are humans and nothing more — but they have souls that span over centuries and bodies. They are aftershocks of the creation of the universe: pure energy contained in a mortal form. I am not an angel, yet I will outlive them all. His name was Gabriel, and he was a kind, beautiful, perfect person. I was still very much a child when I met him — yet adult enough to love him and adult enough to break him. Gabe was beautiful. He was short, and he had delicate limbs that he hid under oversized sweatshirts and baggy jeans. His hair was wildfire — glossy, red, and always unbrushed. There was a scar on his right cheekbone. When Gabe entered the room, the room got quiet. When Gabe spoke, people listened. When Gabe touched a wound, the pain went away. They called him an angel — his parents, his teacher, his friends. They knew there was something special about him. I have watched angels live and die and be reborn. I have seen the joy that they bring into the lives of others — how the room seems to light when an angel enters — and I know that Gabe was an angel. God cannot tell me if I am right: He does not know the angels, He simply find them, as the rest of us do, and He delights in their presence. They remind Him of the time when the universe was young and energy was a beautiful, free-floating thing. The angels are God's newest favorites, but he is still discovering them. He does not know what creature Gabe was. But I know that Gabriel was an angel. I am sure of it. I see him in all of those angels — one wears his smile, one has his frailness, one is as innocent. The pieces of him hide in others now. Because Gabriel the angel will never rise from the ashes that was once Earth. I broke him — I ruined him. When he died in the fires that destroyed the planet, his soul ended. Gabriel and I met in school. We were both fourteen, and we loved each other from the first instant. Gabe came halfway though the school year. He had left his old school with bad memories and a wound on his cheek that was almost a scar. Angels are God's fingers, doing all of those beautiful things that God is known for. I was the child of a hard-working single mother who had not had enough time to raise me, and I was a strange child — outcast but loved, feared yet cared for, because I would stare at strangers and kiss boys. Gabe set out to be my friend because the angel in him thought I needed one. Angels do not know they are angels, but they feel it. They know they are wiser than other, and that they sense things that others cannot. They do good things, and they are kind, because they are angels. Gabe was wonderful to me. He let me play with his hair and touch his pink scar. He became friends with Sophia just to be with me. He let me kiss his cheek. He rode elevators to the top floor of high buildings and sat with me in front of windows, overlooking the pavement and the people. At first he loved me because the angel that he was made him love me. I thought him the perfect friend, who did not question my schemes or my desires. On the day I turned fifteen we took the tube to the Kew Gardens, and we kissed in the biggest of all the greenhouses and we became much more than friends. The angel Gabriel was good for me. Gabe did not protect me as others had — instead, he let me rule over him. Through Gabe I became stronger, and I learned that there were people in the world like my mother and Sophia and him that wanted to know my feelings and my secrets. He taught me confidence. He was patient and quiet and careful as I learned to love. But things went wrong. Gabriel who loved me because he was an angel slowly became Gabriel who loved me and was nothing more. I was still a child. As much as my mother had loved me, as much as my friends and teachers had looked out for me, as much as Gabe had done for me, I was still the child that would one day sell the world to God. I was too curious. I was a little too cold. I was strange. I was the child who set the fly free and ripped the wings off of an angel. The more I kissed him and the more I loved him, the more that I knew that Gabriel was a being from heaven. The more I saw of his goodness and of his godliness, the more I wanted to understand it. The more I saw of his troubles, of the problems angels face, the more I wanted to know them. I was cold and I was loving, I was perfect and I was a horror, and I pushed and I prodded and I explored. He loved me when I held hands with other boys and he loved me when I kissed his pain away. He loved me through my jibes and my cruelties and through those moments that were only ours. I do not know why he stayed with me. It was a foolish thing for him to do. Maybe he was trying to change me, to help me, because that is what angels do. Maybe he had fallen in love with me and could not leave. I do not know. I did not question it. Gabe was my toy, no matter how I loved him. Under my clumsy child's fingers, Gabe broke. His glass limbs and fairy dust freckles were too delicate for my touch. I watched him change. I watched as he grew to love me and others grew to love him less. He no longer lit the room — he made people pity him. He was not so sweet or so charming. People thought him obsessed, and they thought it unhealthy. He loved me, and I did him wrong. I still thought him beautiful and I still adored him, but my eyes wandered. My little betrayals caused him much pain, and although he could forgive me my trespasses, he could not forgive himself. He thought he was to blame for my infidelity, and he hated himself for it. He cried, and he cursed, and he drew new scars on his arms and thighs with scissors. I was a foolish child, and I treated him poorly, and I did not calm him or help him, and it got worse, and worse, and worse. The school nurse was the one that finally took him from me. She found the red lines during a checkup at the beginning of the year. She told his teachers and his mother and before classes had barely even begun Gabe was gone, off again to another school. I'm sure he wanted to find me, and I know they watched him too closely for that. I do not know what happened to him after he left me. I found other interests and then I found God, and Gabriel slipped from my mind. The memories of Gabriel came back to me when God found one of the first in a line of many, many angels: a beautiful young boy angel. His white and red coloring reminded me of pale skin and fine hair, and I thought of Gabriel. It does not matter now. They are all dead. Even the boy who was an angel is dead. There is no reason to regret the pain I caused him. There is no reason to dwell. I only wish that I could see what these hands would do to him now — to see if he would break again or if their touch has grown more nimble after knowing the skin of God. Gabriel was an angel, once. He loved me, I ripped away his wings, and he died. That is all. |