Cold Tea

Content warning: suicide, mental health struggles, and homophobia. NOTE: This story is fictional. None of these characters are based off real people.

Dear Mara,

The night you killed yourself, the tea in your mug had grown cold.

It’s one of the moments that has stayed with me. The unwelcome taste of chamomile pushing down my lips. I had expected vodka. Or beer. Something sharp and numbing, but that night — it was tea.

Cold tea.

You’d hated tea, but you’d drained the cup before the sun rose.

When I asked why, you’d shrugged it off. Saying that you needed to stop drinking so much.

Now I think about it, I’m sure it was because you didn’t want to die drunk.

It was snowing. Soft, powdery flakes caught in your eyelashes, and when you blinked — I could have sworn you were an angel. The flickering candle between us threw gilded beams across your face, and the smile on your lips could have stopped my heart.

If I’d had the time, I would have stuffed your smile into ivory flasks and drunk it like warm honey.

You hadn’t smiled in months.

That night, you cut your hair. Avoiding my gaze as you brought a pair of glinting scissors to your head and sheered off the soft strands. They fell, slipping like water into a pool around you.

You told me that the camp your father was sending you to was hot, that long hair would bother you during the summer.

But it was the middle of winter, and I think you were lying to me.

I think that you craved the violence of the change. The release the blades offered you. Nobody ever sees the anger behind the scissors. The frenzied, aching desperation to be something, anything else. Your father had loved your hair long, and he’d insisted that you were not allowed to cut it. The long, rough strokes of the scissors were meant to change you. Away from what you’d always been.

I think that cutting your hair was your way of declaring you were done.

You just couldn’t say it in words.

That night, with a candle between us, your hair on the floor, and a cold cup of tea on the ledge — you’d kissed me.

You’d stopped smiling in the candlelight, you’d finished cutting off your hair. You had been crying, telling me that your parents were angry — that they were sending you away.

You had told me that you hated them, and for the second time in both of our lives, you kissed me.

You tasted like the cold. Like frozen snow and icy water in shoes, but I don’t remember caring. I just remember feeling. Something between pain and content, a desperate need to savor this moment, to hold onto it.

I think I knew, deep down. What you were planning to do.

I think that’s why I clung to that kiss so tightly, and I don’t think I’ll ever forgive myself for it.

You weren’t supposed to kiss me, and I wasn’t supposed to want it, we were both seventeen — too young to want anything.

You were a girl.

I was a girl.

But you did kiss me.

And I did want it. Every second of it, and I think you did too.

And then you pulled away, and you cried into my shirt. Begging me to forgive you.

I did, of course. You could have beaten me blue and I would have apologized for bruising your knuckles.

That night, we sat together until the candle burned out and our fingers were losing feeling. The snow was still caught in your eyelashes, and your freshly cut hair bobbed under the inky canvas of the sky.

You were crying a little.

I figured it was because of the camp.

The night that you killed yourself, I left the roof first.

You’d told me that you wanted to watch the sunrise, and that you wanted one night alone before you left.

I’d been dizzy enough from the kiss that I’d just assumed you meant leaving for the camp. I thought you hated me for the intimacy, so I left you. I thought I was making it worse.

You jumped thirty minutes after I got home.

The note that you left me had candle wax on it, and ink had smudged where your tea-soaked fingers had traced the words.

That was three months ago.

Now, I’m sitting on top of the same roof, an old candle flickering in front of me.

Your not here, of course.

You were buried. I was at your funeral, or at least part of it. The preacher who spoke talked about your purity. Your devotion. He talked about the loving family that you had.

A few people talked about your hair, if it matters to you. Friends you pretended to like said that it suited you, and your parents comforted them.

They kicked me out, though there is no surprise there.

The casket was closed, but I would have liked to say goodbye. I would have liked to apologize. They made me leave before I could.

After everyone had left, I went to your grave.

It was beautiful. The headstone was smooth, light marble. Your name was engraved on it.

Mara Lilys.

I brought dandelions and buried the little white hairs of the flowers in the freshly upturned soil. Maybe, when the ground thaws, they’ll grow.

Maybe the land keeper will moan about the weeds and rip them all up from the ground.

Maybe none of it even matters at all.

It’s colder, up on this roof. I’m not wearing much, the jacket that I brought is on the ledge. All I have under it is your old shirt, and a ratty pair of jeans.

My mom was talking to a neighbor today, about the camp your parents wanted you go to. A conversion camp, for fixing kids. She said your name like a dirty word. Is this what you were afraid of? The rumors?

I would’ve have helped you, if you told me it was a conversion camp. I would have told your parents that I had convinced you to kiss me, that it wasn’t your fault. It was five months ago they caught us, that was enough time to fix it.

I wish you’d let me help.

I want to remember you, in these moments.

I cut my hair up here. I didn’t have the same fancy scissors you did. The cut was rough and messy, and the kitchen shears are sitting on top of my jacket.

I have tea with me as well. A cup of cold tea. God, this stuff is disgusting. I finished the mug though, it’s supposed to calm the mind.

I guess I should get to the point.

In your note, you made me promise to stay.

But you weren’t around for me to make the promise.

So I’m sorry but I can’t.

You’ll be happy to know that I can watch the snow while I fall. It might soften the landing.

Sorry. Goodbye.

From, Amy.

authors note:

if your struggling with these thoughts, please remember there are people who care about you. 988 is a hotline in the United States, and there are countless resources online 🫂.