The letters had begun to form a pile next to his desk. He had been writing them for over a day now, pausing to sleep in half-hour increments whenever his pain abated enough for him to do so. He had attempted to retire around midnight, but kept waking up at intervals to find his pillows soaked with the tears that fell unchecked from his closed eyes.
Fourteen letters, each over three pages in length—at least 42 pages altogether, if he didn’t count the one or two that had exceeded the three-page pattern. He stared at the latest one and grimaced. His handwriting, once neat and curved, had become crabbed, close-knit. And then there were the tear stains on the page,
blotting out the ink in certain places.
He rose, walking away from the desk, leaving the stack of parchment behind him. He circumnavigated the cluster of furniture in the room, stepping over the mess that had been borne of his losing the love of his life, very possibly forever.
Many of his prized possessions—from his memoirs, to the awards and framed photos he kept— were now smashed and scattered across the room. Notebooks filled with years worth of writing—letters, notes—had been torn in half and thrown around the space as he had vented his anguish. Coffee mugs too had been shattered on the walls, the liquid they’d contained running down in deep, dark rivulets.
Not to be outdone, his clothes, neat and crisp at one time, had also bore his wrath, splashed with ink and coffee stains. And his hair, usually well-styled, hung limp from his head, combed ragged by his fingers raking through it; his eyes were sunken and hollow. He was just as much of a mess as his room.
He staggered out onto the porch, the sunlight sending bolts of pure agony through his hypersensitive eyes. Although he was aware of the pain, and knew that under normal circumstances, he would have been screaming, the agony was dwarfed by the ache and longing in his chest. Breathing was difficult. It was a labour in and of itself—painful, as if the very air was punishing him for having let her go.
And what had become of her? Of the ‘them’ they had been planning on becoming? Would he ever hear from her again? Was she angry at him? Would she cast him aside forever? Or would things turn out all right in the end? Would she come back to him, as he had once before, to fill his arms with warmth and happiness? Would she nuzzle him gently and purr against his chest as he kissed her head, the way she had before? The uncertainty was killing him. Slowly, yes, but it was killing him for sure.
His life had become an all-consuming inferno of pain, his emotions constantly at battle with his rational mind. His emotional side wanted nothing more than to vanish from where he was and reappear anywhere nearer to her. He wanted to plunge in like a predatory hawk and steal her away from the misery she was in. He wanted to be the sharp blade of justice that would descend in time to punish whoever was responsible for her pain.
His logical side, on the other hand, told him there was simply nothing he could do at the moment. Interfering would only make things worse. She had ties to sever first. If he went to her now, it could result in anything from making her hate him to other, potentially worse, scenarios. No; he would have to sit at wait. No matter how impossible it seemed.
He grasped at a broken window pane, and the broken glass cut into his palms. Once again, he realised that it should have hurt—it just simply didn’t. It was as if his entire body was committed to hurting at his loss, and could spare no pain to alert him to the agony his hands should have been in. His skin, pale and smooth, was already burning beneath the sun’s blazing gaze. His hands were on fire, covered in blood, and his pupils had contracted to the point of inexistence. And yet, he still stood there.
His tears fell three stories to land in the empty parking lot below. “Please…don’t leave me alone,” he whispered to the blue sky. “I truly can’t live without you. And I know some part of you feels the same. I lost you once; I will not lose you again. Not without dying.”
Suddenly, his knees gave out. His hands slipped from the pane as he fell against the wooden slats; his tears splattering on the woodwork, little streams forming and running between the boards as he knelt there and wept.
It didn’t feel like hours exactly, but when he felt strong enough to stop crying, the moon had already risen. In contrast to the harsh waves of the sun, the satellite bathed him in frigid rays that illuminated his face and eyes. His dishevelled state spoke nothing of the man he had once been as he hauled himself to his feet, still swaying unsteadily.
He hadn’t eaten or slept well for days. Food refused to stay in his system for more than an hour at a time, and he couldn’t sleep without being troubled by dreams of the woman he had loved and the tears that pooled in his eyes at her memory.
He looked back into his apartment, at the bed he had shared with her. Images came flooding to him as he gazed over familiar objects. His coat—a place she would hide in when his words brought a blush to her velvet cheeks—hung forlorn on the back of his door. His sunglasses, which she had hated because they hid his eyes from her, were smashed on the floor, orange shards littering the lobby. His black collared shirt—her favourite—was draped over a chair. A velvet cape, a small gift he had been given that had stirred such glee in her, was slung carelessly over the couch they used to sit together on. Everything felt like her. Everything bled of her. His world was saturated—drowning—in her very essence, an essence he couldn’t escape.
His body somehow led itself to the bed. Books and a smashed lamp covered it, and were quickly swept away as he fell to the sheets. They, like everything else, carried her in their material. He curled up into a ball, wrapping the sheets around himself as if to ward away the demons that plagued him from
within, and continued to cry.
Overhead, unsympathetic and ever-watchful, the moon shone down on him. The moon that had once shone upon them both. The moon they shared. A link to her he could not exploit. Instead, the pale orb bathed him in its ivory glow, highlighting him and his misery as he lay there and wept. Prepared for another sleepless night...
- Kamana Upreti
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