Tra Sole e Parole

Don’t get me wrong, I am happy. I write about you less and less. Most days, I just let the words sit with me  for minutes, sometimes hours,  as I drive through the streets still stained with your name. I think about you and then I forget. With enough distractions, enough someone elses, months later, what once was an open wound is now just a bruise. The kind you forget is there but still hurts when you touch it. They didn’t lie, time heals after all. So maybe the worst is over. Even if some nights, I still catch myself awake past midnight wondering where’s that one piece of me that went missing and never came back. But still, don’t get me wrong, I am happy. Even if happy doesn’t mean whole and definitely doesn’t mean complete. Maybe all of this is just my way of saying I miss you. And what a terrifying thought it is to still miss you after a year or two or five or ten. What a terrifying thought it is to keep moving forward without ever finding the strength  to move on from...

There’s a saying health is a luxury only the sick can see. And just like that, how lucky you are is only seen to the one who loved you but never received the love in return. 

I think this is it. I think this is finally it. Do it. The wall we built— so cracked, it’s barely standing and you get to throw the final strike. Do it. Let this be the end of it. Tear down the wall I plastered with my sweat, my blood, my devotion, my denial, everything I was, everything I had left. Tear down the wall that held every hope, every what-if, every should’ve, would’ve, could’ve. Throw one final blow, and that’s it. Let the bricks rain down on my body. Let them break my jaw, crush my spine, fracture my ribs for I am only— a small price you have to pay. A collateral damage too insignificant to notice. Break me until each neuron in my body stops screaming your name. Make me feel nothing. Turn me into nothing. And maybe, by then, you will be nothing too. Or so I wish.

If someone had been gone this long the authorities will have presumed them dead. So I threw you a funeral. The kind with  no casket and  no body. No sympathies, no condolences, no simple white lilies. No one’s wearing black, no one’s lighting candle. A devastation only I can feel. Although sometimes I do wish you were dead. So I could slice this sadness like a cake  and share the pieces  with someone else. Perhaps with your mother, or your sister, or some stranger across the street who’s heard good things about you. The day you died, I wish I could mark it. Carve it into a tree, scribble it on a wall, let the grief settle somewhere that isn’t always me. But I can’t. You’re still breathing somewhere— whole, content,  and perhaps fulfilled. And sometimes it feels unfair but other times it feels deserved. For all the strings in the past— that I cut without blinking, I’ve finally learned what it feels like to lose someone.

Years from now maybe I’ll be sitting in a park next to a child that has your eyes and your smile. And I’ll whisper “Thank your mother for me” She saved my life.

I know for a fact there’s not gonna be another you or another us. And I know I can’t grow another heart, can’t shape my wounds into butterflies. But I don’t know why I keep growing older while time stands still. I don’t know why the seasons still change when the world stopped spinning. It’s bizarre how many places I’ve been when I haven’t moved an inch. I tried running, I tried walking, I tried crawling. But all I get is one step forward, one step back. As if life were an endless burning desert and no matter how far I go, I’m still where you left me.

For a moment, I believed removing the dagger  from my chest would stop the pain. Only the wound opened wider. No hands to stitch it, six long months, and I’m still bleeding. I don’t know how to forgive myself for how long I’ve let it consume me, I’ve let it feast on me until I could no longer tell where the pain ends and I begin. I killed you, burned your body, buried the remnants of your bones deep beneath the ground, and still, you remain. Dostoyevsky was right. Your worst sin is to destroy and betray yourself for nothing.