euthanised

Prologue - Also Called A Study of A Past Vestige

"Quoth the Raven "Nevermore."". That's what was carved on your gravestone. Hesitation and regret had already betrayed me, leaving me with a void in the place of emotions. Eyes closed, I kneel in front of it, paying respect to your memories. After a brief shudder, I extended a pale finger, letting it dance across the carvings. I chose to feel the cross first, the most familiar to me. You weren't the first I lost, but you certainly were the most painful. My finger stopped for a moment, then trailed down the cold slate, to the "REST IN PEACE, GERARD ARTHUR WAY" and where in other gravestones, it would have said "loving ______" was nothing. Because what words could describe you? What words could show what you have done to me? You were far more than a friend, more than a lover, more than a role model. In a way, you were I. Eyes still closed, I reached towards the plagiarised line - the Allen Poe one. Someone once told me, seeing is believing. Not wanting to believe you gone, my eyes remained closed.

Maybe this was a nightmare, a never ending nightmare. Maybe it was the sort of dream you wake up with a cold sweat, panting, eyes dilated. Maybe it was me being delusional, imagining you gone. At any given moment now, I was going to open my eyes, and you would be there, lying across my chest, head that familiar half-tilt. Your dyed hair would be messy, all across my inked body, slightly ticklish to the bare skin. I would extend my hand, and shake your shoulder, and you would wake up. But that never was going to happen. I knew it. Every sinew in my weary body told me in a haunting mantra, that you were never coming back. I could kid myself every night, and say that you were simply on a business trip, but the whitewashed walls that cracked under frustrated blow after frustrated blow said otherwise. The cracked voice, and the wiped tears said otherwise. My bruised knuckles said otherwise, and the blood that decorated them said otherwise. My heart that beat alone again, said otherwise. Everything that was mine, or ours said otherwise, yet I chose to deny it. Because denial was an easy emotion to understand, to comprehend. This fucking pain, wasn't.

This is the sort of pain that ends people, the sort of pain that people want to be euthanised from, the sort of pain that makes people feel that their veins are a void, the sort of pain that makes you feel nothing, and everything. It's the sort of pain someone who saw, and is now blind understands. It's the pain of someone missing a vital part of themselves, vanquished in a single accident.

Guilt crept into my nullified heart. Till the day I die, I know I will hold myself accountable. I didn't need an autopsy, I didn't need a verdict to be told that the gunshot was self inflicted. I knew it. I didn't know why you did choose to end your life, which fueled my empty screams of 'why'. A thought again, and I realised I knew why you chose to do it. It was because you'd never truly believed I loved you, not after that incident. It was because I saw the doubt in your eyes when I promised you my love. It wasn't just that, however. I saw your eyes, how dark they were becoming, as if there was no soul in your body. They weren't the starry eyes that I had fallen in love with. Dark nights show the brightest stars, but black holes remove them. This was what had become to your eyes. They had become starless. You didn't seem to feel, and I saw you, become a stranger once more, as if you were a passenger on a subway.

My words hadn't been enough, neither had my love - my alleged love, you once joked. I had tried to save you with my best. But I failed, so to hell with it. They don't tell people that at primary school, or when they go to high school, but it's the reality of it. Your best never fucking matters if you fail.

Someone once told me, seeing is believing.

I believed that, till I closed my eyes, and saw you gone.