When He Stopped Listening

time severs

He's on our threadbare couch this morning, his posture resigned, his bleak meal untouched.

Eyes as lacklustre as the moon on a stormy night.

Skin sagging where it was once bright and taut.

Clothes that are dishevelled, scruffy and dirty.

He slept in the garden, under the stars last night.
Though they did little to illuminate him, they highlighted the lines upon his face, tracing tracks to troubled places. The ageing has accelerated.

His disintegration is a shockingly visual affair.

I love a hollow carcass.

I don't bother to ask what happened to us for I know. I just sit with him and hold him. He doesn't notice me but it's okay. I'm used to being a ghost.

When he does something unexpected.

I suppose I should have paid more attention to his browser history.

He ambles to the kitchen, unearths a first aid kit and removes a 300ml syringe.

He carries it back to the couch.

He flops back with a deep sigh.

''I love you far too much. Forever is impossible but so is living without you, even if it is transient. You're the moon of my existence. The goddess that, by sheer luck, fell for a mediocre fellow like me. Thank you for our years of paradise. I'll love you eternally.''

A moving soliloquy he delivers for me with a cracking voice and tears creeping along his beaten skin.

He loves me.

He still loves me! This is excellent! I must celebrate! The grandest champagne will only just do!

But I don't celebrate. No applause is welcome here.

''I wish you could come back to me! Just once more! Just for a day! Just to let me spoil you again, feed you, carry your shopping, kiss your crimson lips, feel your climax against me. I just wish I could tell you how much I love and always will love you. Absolutely, no matter what! I relied on you too much yet I don't regret loving as hard as I do. Since I know you loved me the same. At least I hope you did. God, I hope you were happy with me. I hope I gave you everything you wished for. I hope I was everything you had desired for me to be. For you far surpassed anybody's expectations.''

He openly weeps the second instalment, voice anguished, body thrown about like a puppet from the wracking sobs. I'm crying too, I feel my vision blurring as  tears line my own haggard face.

''Goodbye, my Phoenix.''

Whispers.

He clasps the syringe in his shaking right hand.

He stills his grief.

His face a façade.

He shuts his blackened amber eyes.

He slowly retracts the plunger,

passing the 100ml mark,

200ml,

finally reaching full capacity at 300ml.

Only, he does not suction water or any other solution.

He sucks up air.

His right hand calms. An eye in the storm.

He watches intently what he does.

He fluidly places the syringe at the crook of his spindly left arm.

Veins blue as the sky on the day we met.

I snap back.

''NO! STOP! WHAT ARE YOU DOING? NO! DON'T DO WHAT YOU'RE DOING, YOU'LL BE DEAD TO ME!'' I wail.

Just as dead to me as I am dead to him.

See, the accident, it killed me.

And thus, with a controlled plunge, he falls.

Forever lost to the world, forever lost

To

Me.