kiwi || h.s [edited]

Chapter Thirteen

Concluding that the weight of my sorrow being too much to bear, I decided that I needed more time. Time to myself and time to seal a wound that refused to heal. That stayed infected and stayed tinged with a numbing pain. I had been startled that frightful morning with his brown eyes bearing into my own as he ripped any trace of slumber and peace from my body. Everything was smothered in a layer of despair and ghastly grief.

My mind was at war with these hopeless notions that I would never be about to mount this insurmountable grief. That this pain would continue to burrow beneath my skin until it finally found my heart. That all this wanting and dreams of a future that would never be ours tore through me in heart-stopping waves of hurt. And this ocean of affliction never relented and never stopped.

My closet stared at me with such determination I eventually found my way out of the bundle of sheets that laid messily all around my body. I felt my hand quiver lightly as I thought about what nestled deeply in the back of my closet. Somehow I found myself sat with box now ripped away from is silencing darkness. It was a weary medium sizes box that somehow managed to contain an ocean of sentiments within its minimal confides. I flipped the lid off with little effort and as my hand sunk into the lake of memories, I found a lump had made a comfortable home within my throat.

How silence could feel so deafening would be unfathomable to me. How my unused voice still ached with the pain of use was a feat I never understood. Maybe it was the words of misery that I screamed in my nightmares that had taken my desire to use my dust vocal cords.

Eventually my hand re-emerged with a bundle of film photographs tied together by a brown elastic band. I had always harboured such a childish adoration for photography. Believing that there were moment too important, too special to allow to dwindle into our ever-changing memories. These specific moments that I held so gingerly in my hand were those which were too precious and intricate that I had never allowed anyone else's eyes to fawn over the scene they capture. The photo that laid right at the top like a sharp needle that pricked against my unsuspecting finger was the one Maggie had taken of Andrew and me. 

It was some forgettable party of one New York friends, all of which Andrew had always claimed to be the most horrid collection of human beings. But even in an environment he'd rather escape from, he managed to make it an unforgettable night. The longer I thought about that night the larger the agony grew in my hurt which rested amongst grief and sorrow in the gaping hole that been delicately carved into my soul.

I missed him so terribly.

And a terrible fear shivered over my spine that I would always be burdened with this gut-wrenching desire to look into the eyes of my beloved. Eyes that no longer held a trace of life. Hands that no longer held the only warmth that could seize the cold from own hands. I would never hear the laughter that sent jolts of joy through my body. Please, I - I just need to bury this future that I dreadfully clung to despite its searing burn.