Who knew so little words could make such a big impact on one persons life?
As I turn away from the warm fireplace I look down at the stack of postcards, polaroids, letters, you name it. They're all scattered over each other like the words I fumble to find in my mind on how to describe you. I just don't know how I could have you one day and you'd be gone the next. Taken from me like the dimly lit stars in the morning sky - slowly fading to nothing in my vision. But never really gone in my heart. It's not as if it's actually you there, though. Just a big rotting hole in the middle of the muscle that keeps me alive barely day in, day out.
Your letters are what stay in my brain the most. They hold your only words to me that have not been silenced. I have lost count of how many tears that have soaked your neat handwriting that I've held so tightly against my chest many a times. The only part of you that is still visible to me and my eyes. The only thing left of you that my fragile fingers can trace straight back to you. The one thing holding me back from ending it all myself. Because I know and I've gone through this time and time again in my mind that these pieces of you will not exist in the next world. And I cannot bear to let go of the only last thing I have left of you.
The polaroids of you that you sent to me through the mail. Where your long flowing brunette hair would be curling amongst itself in the cold of the wind. Your bright face with the creases of the corners of your eyes that would show up every time I saw you.
The only things I really looked forward to after sitting in the dark was the knock of the mailman at my old rickety door and the fragments of you that I will never give over to anyone or anything. And after all this I now only look forward to seeing you again, my dear. I despise social interaction and my worst fear is seeing light again. For my last memory of you in the flesh was the sunlight beaming down onto your beautiful face, your shining eyes and your tired smile. Your hospital gown that you were too good for wearing and the beeps of the monitors. You looked so out of place and I was disgusted.
The last beep of the monitor before you slowly closed your exhausted eyes and any life that still thrived in your heart and lungs and brain had escaped through the last breath out from your faded and dry lips. The lifeless body of what had once been a young woman excited for life just for it to be taken from her own grasp through sickness and death.
The sunlight has become my worst enemy. I curse at the weather no matter what it is. Any type of climate I live in will constantly remind me of you when you walked on two feet still. When your voice was not just a mere echo of the wind that seeps through droughts in my window cracks.
And I have continuously lived to hate laughter and happier times and memories. They are the only memories I have of you. I will not think about the hospital any more. I refuse to believe the way you left me in the shadows. And now you too are a dancing shadow in the flickering light of my melting warm candle. Gone with the tide and to join the rest of the ones that could not work the strength to keep ahold of reality. The ones that have also had the light taken from behind their eyes. And now my only thought that plays on my aged mind is how I look forward to seeing you in the next life, my dear.
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De TodoA short story of a man recalling his memories of his love many years ago.