temporary fix || george harrison

54%

I HATE my birthday. I always have, for as long as I can remember. It wasn't that I hated the fact of my birth, no. It was more so the false pretenses under which I was conceived.

And still yet, it was never about me growing up either. It was about how my father's perfect little girl was coming of age. How valuable she'll be to the Bishop Dynasty upon her fortuitous union with the omnipresent Dawson empire.

However, this year was just a tad different from years past; I was finally all alone. Gone were the convoluted celebrations from stone faced guests who packed 9mm pistols in the satin backs of their Tom Ford coats. Gone was the cloying scent of Chanel No. 9 effusing from the rigid necks of the waspy socialites my mother tolerated with a steely smile.

Instead, this morning I arose softly before the peak of dawn and poured myself a cuppa.

One lump of sugar and a dash of cream, and then I sat down to read the coded letter my sister stealthily sent to me with a thick packet of bank notes to "jumpstart my life" as she so called it in the rushed correspondence that weighed on my chest as I quietly listened to the typical morning traffic begin to stack up on the streets.

Mornings were the toughest of all times, perhaps more bitter and cruel than the evenings. As every morning without fail, I searched for him. My cold body aching to feel that intense heat that his slender frame radiated at all hours of the day.

I made fun of him for it, cajoling him as he just pushed me away with a tender kiss to my cheek.

In the mornings that were almost too rupturing to withstand, I's force my mind to remember the way his aftershave tingled my lips in the morning to sedate me. I'd recall when he'd wake me up with a cheeky grin that only he could muster with such boyish charm.

Last weekend after a successful walk through the city without a panic attack, I'd gently let in the memory of the way his eyes used to look when a ray of sun fell upon them. Like bowls of saturated dark honey, so earthly and grounded as if they'd been made straight from Gaia's own splendid hearth; they never failed to remind me that my home was always within him.

These past months without him have been... excruciating. It was an indescribable hollowed out feeling that couldn't ever be filled by money, sex, drugs, booze. I was a shadow figure, not even fully corporeal without the love of my life to fill my body in with flesh and bone.

But with each passing day, I grow more resilient to the screaming silence, now almost being a year without him.

I've been without him more than I was with him, but yet the sound of his melodic voice rings true and clear within the planes of my wistful mind.

It's my birthday today, and today out of all days, I was going to allow myself to remember the way he kissed me. Slowly, hungrily, softly, desperately. Like the world was about to end and he wanted to spend those final moments lost in the movement of our lips as the world caved in around us.

My chest tightened as I recalled the sensation of his lips on mine and I sharply inhaled as I refilled my cuppa for the third time this morning. I hadn't any plans beyond drinking my tea and watching helios being dragged up into the sky.

If nearly half the greek pantheon presented themselves to me this past year, I felt that it was safe to assume the other half existed too- including the primordial gods.

"Happy birthday, Ju." I murmured to myself as I caught a glimpse of my mussed brown hair in the mirror on my night table. My eyes weren't as vibrant as I last remember them being, and my face almost appeared sullen if you looked close enough. But I suppose I could just be being dramatic.

Life goes on within you and without you, even in a desolate world where half of you feels as if it's blackened and withered away into the wind.

The sound of the door ring rapping in the distance disrupted the steel of my reverie, and I sighed airily as I set my cuppa down to go answer whomever it was at the door.

It was most likely my landlord, this odd fellow named Mark, circling about at my sister's request to make sure I was still puttering around safely within my habitat. I wondered if he was coming around at 9:30 am because he knew it was my birthday.

I forced a smile as I breezily opened the door, swinging it open as I fiddled the ends of my worn yellow jumper with my other hand.

And yet nothing in the world could've prepared me for what was on the other side of the door.

All of the grief, the mourning, the pain, the wretched hollowness came rushing back into my stunned system as I locked eyes with my old friend, his hazel irises still as youthful and mischievous as the day I'd met him.

I couldn't speak, and yet I felt my mouth hanging ajar with air wisping in and out as my heart raced at the aged visage of Sir Paul McCartney softly smiled at me. I couldn't tell if I was more taken aback by how my mind couldn't process how he'd aged, or if I was more thrown by how he'd actually found me.

"Happy Birthday, Ju. I thought I'd pop in to wish you myself!" Paul chirped in his warm drawl, pulling a brown paper wrapped box from behind his back.

"H-h-hi Paul."