UM(1) Creative Writing Club (Activity)

Hayley Faye

I am almost everything a cemetery is.

Sometimes I wonder...

What's the purpose of my being?

No matter how many times I questioned myself, the answer always led to one conclusion.

And it's that I hate the life I was given.

Full of agony.

Full of cruelty.

I reek of death and despair.

And there hasn't been a day I did not hate myself.

The events that had unfolded in the room I was in didn't contain any of my doing.

But.

I hated being a witness in a place where all the sadness and separation in the world seemed to take place.

I envy the torn, battered couch no one wanted on the pavement opposite to the building I was put in. Although it was of no use, at least it could bask in the morning sun and enjoy the wonderful weather on summer days.

How I would give anything to be that old, good-for-nothing couch.

Because anywhere was better than being confined in this dull little room where nothing but depressing and only depressing things happen.

My current occupant was a fifteen year old girl. Her disease had taken its toll. With eyes sunken and cheeks completely drained of their color, you could tell... there wasn't much time left.

The way she speaks, ever so softly, not by her nature but by the condition she was in, the time she takes to utter a word, the deep breaths she inhaled in between gaps, or the way her body shakes when she coughs vibrates through me.

My steely structure mocking her fragile lifeline wavering between the realms of life and death.

But now, her breath was steady and calm, the way it should be and the way I liked it. On some nights, she would weep, for all the things she would never be able to experience, for all the things she couldn't do a healthy person her age is doing, for all the people she had to leave behind, for her life, or for the people who loved her despite her miserable self. On nights like these, soaking through my pillows were tears full of regret, grief, anger and mostly, sadness.

Nevertheless, she was a fighter wrestling in a ring of holding on and letting go and the battle was intense. I was there to witness them all for I, regardless of her best friends, am a groundskeeper for all of her deepest desires she whispers at night to herself.

Before her was a blue-eyed four year old boy with stage four cancer. Before him was a coma patient whose condition deteriorated, a seventy year old man diagnosed with stomach problems but who later died of a heart attack, a suicide patient, and so on.

As prepared as they were to the aspect of losing, they embodied unique fighters which reflected their true selves.

Dawn broke through. Rays of sunshine flitted through the blinds of her window. Some singsong birds rested on her windowsill as if they were trying to peek at the girl who was bravely marching in a battle against her own body.

Apart from the birds chirping, you could almost hear the faint ticking of the clock and more prominently, the rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor.

A new day to live for.

But a woman in the corner of the room seemed to think otherwise.

A woman I knew so well.

NO.

She smiled tenderly at the girl in her beautiful, vulnerable slumber with mournful eyes.

I rattled in protest but it was of no use.

The monitor had gone into a long beep. The sound was vicious and the norm that followed was sinister as usual. Shouts came outside the room from the hospital staff on duty.

But I knew... what's done was done.

Death came and death went.

But their last breaths always remained with me.