Eunoia | Sirius Black

|97|

I wake up every morning and see a family by the side of the road in the playground. The father is always laughing with his 2-year-old daughter. The mother is jogging around the path, and each time she passes her kid, she smiles. Their daughter tries to run like her mother and her father always catches her before she falls. They always leave when the dawn falls and the sun is high. They always come back. 

Today, I don't see them.

Define love. Define why my heart's rhythm is the same length it takes to pronounce the letters of his name. Define why every time I bury, bury, bury the sorrow of separation, it rises back like a tidal wave, pushing my heart to my throat, filling my lungs so there's no space for air. 

I don't just miss him, I mourn his loss. Because I have lost the Sirius I married and instead have found a man who makes me hate myself. 

It's night in our house, another night of separate rooms. I don't know if he's working in the living room or his study, or if he's simply sleeping peacefully in the spare room. Or perhaps he's not sleeping at all. Maybe he misses me. Has he eaten? Should I get up and heat leftovers for him? Has he changed into comfortable clothes or was he so tired he fell asleep in the Auror uniform? Is he home? Did he go out again? Is he sad? Is he happy? Is he okay? 

I don't know when I fall asleep but I think I hear his footsteps outside my door. 

I dream of something vague, something I don't remember well when I wake up. It is mostly a blur. But there is fire. 

There is fire all around the farms, all the hard work, the food, the green leaves bowing down before the heat before they succumb to their fate. I see there are clouds of smoke up in the air, the colour of white in the navy night, the colour of peace, bidding adieu to the forgotten, to the lost. 

I don't remember much of the dream after that, but there are screams. They are tied to wooden stakes, their feet and legs wrapped around in ropes so strong, they scream as they burn. 

The smoke that was once white has now turned black.

I wake up with heavy gasps, I think I'm about to cry but I bite my lip so hard and the blood drips down my chin with the velocity of a scream. 

Sirius has made me breakfast the next morning when I wake up delirious. I don't know what to think of it so I don't think of it at all. I crave physical touch, his, touch.

I don't have to go to the Ministry until eleven in the morning and it's eight. Something in me stirs when I think of what Dawlish said yesterday. 

I pack a bouquet made of poppies and wear the dress I've always hated. It's the favourite colour of my mother. 

I don't know why they have a grave for her. She was burnt, cremated might be the wrong word. They didn't let me have her ashes. I think Grandfather secretly made this grave, spreading her ashes somewhere near to him. 

She was his daughter, no matter how psychotic. And after what his wife had gone through, he had reason to believe that my mother's actions weren't entirely her own. 

The garden where she is has now grown wild. There are vines everywhere, even on her gravestone. I take out most of them but they have thorns. And I don't want my blood anywhere near her. 

I take out the flowers from the bouquet and keep them beneath the stone. She liked poppies, it's mayhap the only thing we have in common. 

"I miss you...sometimes," I whisper. "You were my everything back then, even when you were horrible to me. You were the arms I ran into, and your hold was the one I wanted to escape. Nevertheless, you were my mother. And you brought me into this world. I wish you'd been nicer."