It’s December and I didn’t do anything I promised myself I would last year.
He laughs. And then he becomes serious, searching my eyes.
What are you talking about? I think you’ve done plenty of things. Plenty of steps forward.
I have done plenty of steps but in the wrong direction. I’m not where I should be.
You’re not in the place you shouldn’t be anymore. Maybe that is your biggest achievement. It takes a lot of courage to do that.
Everything has a price, I suppose.
His eyes were soft now, hands in hair wrapped like ivy on tombstone. Misty ghost land of heavenly, faceless, bodies. That’s where we are all destined to be. What’s the point? If all things are going to end anyway, what’s the point? If my body will merge with the soil, flowers will spring from my womb, branches will grow and wither from my arms, and this eternal sense of melancholy will still be present in the space between my lungs and heart even when my flesh will be rotten. So I suppose it is a big deal then, fighting for your own life. But I don’t say any of this. Instead I just watch his open face, so familiar and yet anonymous.
It should not be so difficult.
You’re making it hard for yourself asking the wrong questions, love.
It is my turn to laugh.
So it’s always my fault with you, uh?
I guess it is. At least, this time.
Do you think about that often?
Outside the window, a crow caws. Sky under dense clouds obscuring the sun. I know what he’s asking.
About what?
Me, you, that little apartment we shared. The white wall where we painted a future that never became reality.
Not so often.
He laughs again. I’ll miss you, you know?
What will you miss?
I know all those little tiny things about you. The bridge of your favourite song, the way your irises change in the twilight hours. I know how you drink your tea and the way you hate espresso but pretend to love it for the sake of your reputation. A strong, independent woman. I remember our conversation, your opinion about planets and stars and the universe. Macrocosmo and life. But those things don’t really matter anymore, right?
I laugh, blinking tears away at the ceiling even if my eyes are dry, trying to ignore the pounding heart in my ears.
I guess they don’t, because I’m not that person anymore. It’s been a long time.
He’s looking at me softly when I turn my head, searching for his gaze. His hands wrapped around my body like he used to do all the time. How he still does in sleepless nights.
Yes that’s the whole point, I guess. I’m dying, you know?
My breath stutters. Yes, I did know. I do know. But I can’t admit it out loud.
But I still think about you all the time. I still revive all those things in my mind. I still argue and fight and laugh and talk with you in my mind. Time passes slowly and then not so slowly anymore. But this remains the same. I know all of those things that probably don’t even exist anymore.
Yes.
So when I’ll die, this part of you will die with me too.
I suppose.
And that part of you that only I know will forever be mine. This is what love does. It doesn’t match pieces of people to fit together, reassembling them. No. It shatters the whole, breaks it down into a million little portions, each one imperfect, different, unique. When you left you took some parts of myself with you too. Now they are lost forever on me. And they’re going to stay with you as long as you’ll remember them. Those parts will live with you even when I’m long gone.
Please stop.
Why are you crying?
Because you’re upsetting me. Because talking like that is admitting that love is as temporary as everything else. Because you’re taking away from me the only thing I believe in.
It’s the greatest miracle of love.
Making us suffer?
His eyes spark with kindness.
No. Making things and people and places immortal.
