Love, Interrupted
Her bed a memorial, she lay where she had passed into uneasy darkness just four hours before. Reality broke with the unwelcome day as gray light streamed like rain through the treetops and the edges of her half-drawn curtains.
She opened one eye, keeping the other buried in the soft darkness of her pillow. Pale morning illumined a pile of books and letters on her nightstand. Wadded Kleenexes decorated the display with absorbed sorrow. A digital clock – recently moved to this side of the bed – revealed the only change in the room: the progression of shackled time. The green numerals read 6:07.
Hot air drifted from a vent in the ceiling, lazily brushing the curtains as it coursed to where she lay in grief’s wake. Outside, a sparrow sang into the dark autumn morning, in brave defiance of the frigidness of his surroundings. A cold breeze snatched foliage from the limbs of his tree in retaliation, compelling leaves of yellow, red and brown endlessly downward to their place of rest on the chilly earth – confetti heralding the world’s rotation, the cycle of mortality. In due course they would all decay and return to their source, like everything that lives.
She rolled onto her back and opened swollen eyes, forced to acknowledge blue-gray light and the music of the resolute bird. Out of habit or hope, she turned her head to the other half of the queen-sized bed.
It was still empty. She hadn't disturbed that side of the bed since he’d gone away. The sheets hadn't been changed for one month, two weeks, and four nights. Too many changes lately, she told herself. Too much, too fast. One more night…
That was how she measured time now: in passages of night. Night. When tides of tears knotted the muscles of her abdomen. Night. When sounds of commerce ceased and thoughts could not be silenced. Night. When the only words spoken were from the dead lips of the past, always saying “I’ll never leave you. I love you. Forever.”
Days were long and uncertain, yes. But bitter vigils of night were infinite.
Her stomach ached as she raised herself painfully off the mattress and cast her legs over the edge, her feet coming to rest on cottony light blue carpet. She rubbed her throbbing eyes as the warmth from the vent kissed her neck, a poor substitute for the lips she most desired.
As her limbs remembered how to carry her, she ventured a step. Then another. Then another.
Her love interrupted, broken by the real, she shuffled to the room where all normal people begin their day.
She opened one eye, keeping the other buried in the soft darkness of her pillow. Pale morning illumined a pile of books and letters on her nightstand. Wadded Kleenexes decorated the display with absorbed sorrow. A digital clock – recently moved to this side of the bed – revealed the only change in the room: the progression of shackled time. The green numerals read 6:07.
Hot air drifted from a vent in the ceiling, lazily brushing the curtains as it coursed to where she lay in grief’s wake. Outside, a sparrow sang into the dark autumn morning, in brave defiance of the frigidness of his surroundings. A cold breeze snatched foliage from the limbs of his tree in retaliation, compelling leaves of yellow, red and brown endlessly downward to their place of rest on the chilly earth – confetti heralding the world’s rotation, the cycle of mortality. In due course they would all decay and return to their source, like everything that lives.
She rolled onto her back and opened swollen eyes, forced to acknowledge blue-gray light and the music of the resolute bird. Out of habit or hope, she turned her head to the other half of the queen-sized bed.
It was still empty. She hadn't disturbed that side of the bed since he’d gone away. The sheets hadn't been changed for one month, two weeks, and four nights. Too many changes lately, she told herself. Too much, too fast. One more night…
That was how she measured time now: in passages of night. Night. When tides of tears knotted the muscles of her abdomen. Night. When sounds of commerce ceased and thoughts could not be silenced. Night. When the only words spoken were from the dead lips of the past, always saying “I’ll never leave you. I love you. Forever.”
Days were long and uncertain, yes. But bitter vigils of night were infinite.
Her stomach ached as she raised herself painfully off the mattress and cast her legs over the edge, her feet coming to rest on cottony light blue carpet. She rubbed her throbbing eyes as the warmth from the vent kissed her neck, a poor substitute for the lips she most desired.
As her limbs remembered how to carry her, she ventured a step. Then another. Then another.
Her love interrupted, broken by the real, she shuffled to the room where all normal people begin their day.
posted by Wittenberg95 | 6:58 pm
I wish I didnt understand this as well as I do.
Yeah, i wish i didnt understand it too. I can almost feel the pain again.