Motherhood

I know nobody reads this/cares anymore (or at least not that much), but posting my stories brings me a sort of comfort I miss having. So I'm going to continue doing that.

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It had been a while since I had last touched her warm, soft cheek, or watched her as she slowly fell asleep to the sound of my voice reciting old tales nobody cared about (but she still loved them, oh, how she loved them!). I suppose I had finally realized how big she had grown. How she didn’t need me to smooth her hair or soothe her when she cried. But she did now.

She was sick.

She called me, “mommy” and asked me to read her stories again. She cried, afraid that she wouldn’t get better, and I smoothed her hair and soothed her with reassuring words.

I’m not sure either.

But I read her stories and watched her fall asleep and kissed her warm cheek and smoothed her hair and pulled the hospital sheets over her frail shoulders all the same. She soon fell asleep, giving into the powerful sedative to numb her pain.

I tiptoed out of the hospital room and sat outside and buried my face in my hands and wept.

I remember being pregnant. I remember being so aggravated during the last month. I was so large, so rotund, so enormous, I could hardly get up without help. My husband would assist me whenever I tried to bathe. And she was so heavy inside me. I wanted her out, out, out of me!... and into my arms. I wanted to hear her cry, I wanted to pick her up and kiss her smooth baby skin. And when she finally decided it was time to enter the world, it hurt so much. I hated her for putting me through all that pain, but I couldn’t wait until the nurse would wrap her in a towel and put her on my breast. And suddenly, after 36 long hours, there it was. The cry. And everybody in the room laughed and said things I couldn’t make out because I was consumed with her cry. The same cry that would plague me for months to come and would wrench me from my bed every night. It was true, it was real. It rang loud and clear in my ears. I was finally a mother. I couldn’t help but cry a little. I was so exhausted. I just wanted to roll over and sleep, but her cry reminded me she was finally here. The nurse placed her in my arms, and she opened her little eyes and moved her little arms and she had ten fingers and ten toes and her little nose was so beautiful, and I loved her so.

And for seventeen blissful years, she was my darling girl. She was beautiful and healthy and active and friendly and she loved life.

Until it came.

And now, she is stuck to a hospital bed. Sick. Skin and bones. Tired. And so afraid…

And I can’t soothe her. I can’t fill a spoon with the mysterious pink liquid and make her drink it, promising her a sweet if she took it all in one gulp. I can’t take her temperature and give her a pill and tell her to drink lots of liquids and go to bed early tonight. I can’t fill up a hot water bottle and put it over her stomach and tell her she’ll feel better in no time.

There’s nothing I can do. I’m afraid. I’m terrified.

I’m scared I will lose the ten fingers and ten toes and her beautiful little nose. I’m scared I’ll have to make arrangements to bury my young daughter. I’m scared I’ll lose the reason I make it out of bed every morning. I’m scared she will be gone, and I will be forced to live day after day after day, hoping that it was all a bad dream, and waking up to realise her bed is empty and untouched.

She calls me once more, “mommy!”

I wipe the tears off my cheeks and walk back in, smoothing her hair and kissing her warm cheek.

“What shall I read you now?”

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I've been struggling to write a story about being a mother for a very long time, and I quite like this. And I don't know shit about being a mother. I just hope it's somewhat close to reality. 

ps. I'm sorry if this is really depressing.

People I've seen on the bus.

This is a very silly series I began a while ago and never really finished. Here's my favourite person I've seen on the bus.

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I used to take the bus every morning to go to class, and I distinctly remember a woman, not very young, but not old either, who would get on three stops after my own and get off on the same stop I did. There wasn’t anything particularly striking about this woman. She was plain. She wore plain clothes and did her make up and hair in a plain fashion. What made me notice her, amongst all the other plain-looking people I saw daily in the bus, was the enormous diamond on her ring finger. She always wore it. It was on the wrong hand, too. Right means engagement and left means married. But there are different bands and rings for each occasion, at least the way I see it.

So she must’ve either kept it from a failed engagement or simply bought it herself. Either way, I found it strange that one should wear such an extravagant piece of jewellery every day.

From what she wore, I could deduce a number of things. She neither carried nor wore hospital clothing, so she was not a nurse or a doctor at the state hospital nearby. She never wore high heels or overly fancy items of clothing, so she did not work at an office. She probably worked at one of the small shops around the area. If my deductions were correct, there was no need for the diamond ring? I puzzled over it for many days. She wore it on the wrong hand! It was, however, too exuberant to just be a diamond ring. Furthermore, there’s no such thing as just a diamond ring, right? There’s always something.

One day, she got on the bus, sat next to me and folded her hands on her lap. I glanced at the diamond ring. I thought it over once more.

Throughout the day, I thought more and more about it. There must be a reason. There must be a story.

On the ride back home, I sat at the back and watched as we passed by the state hospital. I thought once more about the diamond ring.

The next day, she didn’t get on the bus. Or the day after that. Or ever again, in fact.

I puzzled over that too.

I then realized it wasn’t really important at all, and never thought about it again. 

Tragic Beauty

I wrote this a while back. I had to make some adjustments because the original version is too personal. Here it is, a silly story, modified.

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I want to go somewhere beautiful. Could you take me there?

But not just anywhere! No, not just anywhere. I don’t want awe-inspiring beauty. I don’t want breathtaking beauty.

I don’t want to be taken to a wondrous waterfall or to a lovely wood or to a beach so beautiful, I’ll never want to leave. I don’t want that kind of beauty.

I want to go somewhere tragically beautiful. A ghost town, abandoned decades ago, with nothing but old homes, old wallpaper peeling off, old unused gas stations. An old abandoned house, invaded by grass and weeds and plants, covered in moss, broken windows and no doors. I want to go to a really old cemetery, maybe one that isn’t used anymore. Old gravestones with faded engravings. Old statues broken down by time and rain and vandalized by people who don’t care. I want to go somewhere nobody lives, somewhere so empty and devoid of humanity it feels like it’s never been touched by man. I want to go to this place and just sit and take in its beauty, let its tragedy sink in. I want to feel sad about it. I want to feel like it’s away from me, it’s far from my reach, I want to feel like there’s no salvation and it’s best we leave it alone and go back to our little in a few towns away.

But I want to go back. I want to go back every day and explore it, find out more about it. Why has it been abandoned? And how long? Maybe I’ll go inside a few houses or walk up to the moss-covered stone sitting before the house or run my fingers over faded inscriptions and wonder who they were and why they died.

I want to feel like nothing matters. None of my problems, none of my petty issues, none of my fears and none of my desires. I want, for once, to feel like something is bigger than me. I want to feel insignificant. I want to feel so small, like a speck of dust. I want to know that one day I will die and all my memories and stories will go with me. I want to know that in a couple of decades, nobody will remember me and someone will find my gravestone or my home or my town and wonder what happened to the people who died, the people who lived here, the townsfolk that gave this place life. I want to be part of this musing; I want to be part of some stranger’s thoughts.

Please, take me somewhere beautiful. Somewhere we can hold hands and feel sorry and sad that people leave, that people die, that we become dust. Somewhere I can finally know with certainty that I do love you, somewhere I can let you know. Somewhere so powerful, I forget any doubt. And in my mind, there will only be certainties – that one day I will die and be forgotten.

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Let me know what you think.

Late Night Shift

As promised, a new story. Enjoy!

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I placed the last glass inside the cupboard and sighed. Thank god that shift was over. Everybody had left already, and I was just closing up after a very, very long night. It was Christmas, and I had agreed to take the late night shift, since I need the money. Oh, and everybody else has a family and friends to get back to.

Tonight had been like every other holiday night. Empty, save for the few sorry drunk sods, crying on their beverages, trying to explain to me that it’s really not their fault that their wives and children left them, or that it’s not really their fault they lost their jobs or whatever. I always try my best to listen, but I feel like I’ve heard the same story over and over again. So I just smile and offer them some nuts, on me.

I nudged the old man asleep on the booth at the back. He looked up at me, “time to go?” he asked.

“Time to go.”

He gave me a twenty. I tried telling him he had already paid, but he insisted I took it anyway, and left. I locked the doors and left to the bus stop.

I sat there, alone, at 3am, after a six-hour shift, waiting for the bus to come. There was a broken lamppost not far from where I sat, and it cast a strange shadow at my feet. I stared at it for a while, wondering why it hadn’t been fixed. I looked up at it. Behind it was the starless night sky. I never see stars in the city, only at the suburbs where I used to live as a child.

The bus arrived. It was packed, filled with people like me. Not all of them young, but all of them need the money for something – family, university, rent. They all looked tired and miserable. It was, after all, Christmas. And here we were. Trying to stand without falling in a packed bus, waiting to get home after a long day to eat the leftover turkey your 80-year-old neighbour left at your door because she feels sorry for you. And we all knew we’d be back tomorrow, early in the morning, ready for another full day. Just making enough to get by, making enough to afford a gift or a card, just a little something to remind someone we still love them. Or something.

At the next stop, people poured out of the bus. There were now a few empty seats here and there, which were quickly filled. I sped to the nearest one, at the window. I enjoyed looking at the buildings as the bus moved. I liked seeing the way the skyscrapers jumped up and then fell right down again, and the ones with the light-up billboards announcing the time and the temperature (almost always incorrectly, but at least they tried). As the bus moved further away from the centre of the city, the skyscrapers became tall residential buildings, which turned into big houses, which turned into smaller ones, with the lights still on and you could hear music and people talking and celebrating Christmas. At every stop, the bus emptied more and more, until I was the only one left. My house is at the very outskirts of the city, where people who can’t afford a real home live. I live in the basement of the 80-year-old lady. I have my own kitchen and my own bathroom, complete with old, dirty bathtub. It’s shit, but it’s home.

Also, it’s all I can afford.

I was alone in the bus, so I opened my bag to count my tips. Seventy bucks in tips. Ninety, if you count the extra twenty the old drunk man gave me. It’s all right. It was a slow night, and what did I expect for Christmas? I stuffed the money back in my bag and rubbed my eyes. At least I had enough money for rent and tuition in the bank.

I sighed. I began the same old line of thought; life isn’t hard. I’m not starving. I can afford the basement and I can sometimes splurge on the nice shampoo. I could go out with my friends, had I had time. And friends.

Such is the life of the 20-year-old student, working overtime and only really doing the laundry when there isn’t any clean underwear left.

But there’s this sense of nostalgia creating a gaping hole within me. I’m not sure what it is. I miss something from my old life, my old miserable life living in the suburbs and going to a school I absolutely hated. Maybe I miss having friends I can call every night, maybe I miss having a lover to curl up against. I suppose I miss both of those things. I suppose I miss the certainty of what would happen tomorrow. I knew every day, as I woke up, exactly what would happen. Life wasn’t unpredictable at all. I wasn’t unpredictable. I knew what to expect from others and they knew what to expect from me.

But I don’t know what to expect from my short-tempered boss, I don’t know what to expect of the dingy bar at the heart of the city. I don’t know what to expect from customers. I don’t know what to expect from university and the teachers and tuition. I don’t know what will happen to little old Claire, who so kindly accepts the rent whenever I have it, and doesn’t really mind if I’ve run out of flour and doesn’t really enjoy having her children over because since her husband passed, they’ve just been pushing her to give them the house and kick me out, because I’ve become her only friend in her old, old age.

I don’t know what to expect from myself.

Yes, that is what I miss. I miss the certainty I had before. I miss knowing exactly what would happen. I miss the predictability of the people I saw every day.

I also miss loving. I used to love so many things two years ago. I loved my friends and I loved my significant other. I loved art class and I loved my 15-year-old Labrador, Tessa. I loved my bedroom and I loved our backyard.

And then everything was gone. My friends moved away for university, and my significant other found another paramour to court. I can’t afford art classes in university, and Tessa passed away. My bedroom is no more, and our backyard is gone.

The bus stopped, slowly. My stop. I got off, and walked the extra two blocks home. Claire was already in bed, of course, but at the foot of the stairs were a little package and a plate of turkey for me. The turkey was already cold, but I chewed on it anyway. I opened the door to my lovely basement and filled the tub with scalding water. I opened the package. It was a picture frame with a picture of a smiling Claire and me sitting on her porch.

Goddamn, I love little, old Claire. I couldn’t afford a gift this year. I felt so bad. I placed the picture frame on the nightstand.

I sat inside the tub. The water was still too hot, but it didn’t matter. It was freezing outside anyways.

When the water began to cool, I jumped out and wrapped myself in a big, fluffy towel, before crawling under the thick winter covers and passed out.

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I had planned this story a long time ago, back in August. I wrote down a bunch of ideas for it on one of my many notebooks and this is the finished product. I'm actually quite happy with it, so bleh.

This is currently my desktop picture. Because it makes me happy and I think 2012 should start on a good key.

ANYWAYS, happy new year everybody! I hope you all had a great time partying and enjoying new year's eve, and I hope the hangovers weren't too bad. I know mine wasn't, thank god. I had a great time this year, but getting a cab back home at 5 am was almost impossible. But we did, and Goomy and I got home just fine (then proceeded to crash for something like 7 hours).

As promised, I'll go back to posting stories after the 10th (soon, my lovelies, soon).

Much love,

Lisa

Merry christmas and a happy new year! I hope 2012 treats us all right, because we deserve it.

Also, I promise to go back to posting my stories here once the turmoil of entrance exams goes away.

Much love,

Lisa and Frida

I'm sorry I've been away for so long. I've been really, really stressed out about entrance exams lately, and I'm sure everybody can relate to how hard it is to produce something you actually like when you're under so much stress.

I'm still writing, just not a lot of it. I've got a few pending projects I plan to finish after my last exam in January, and after that I promise to come back!

:)

HEY IS THIS STILL WORKING

Hopeless

Deformed as she felt on the inside, she knew that she was not. She knew that men and women alike lusted for her, and she knew that some of them even loved her dearly, and wanted nothing but her wellbeing.

But it never matters when one feels hopeless.

And though she was loved by someone she loved as dearly and as intensely, she could not live without the imminent sense that she was deformed and diseased, that she carried inside her this virus that could not be killed.

It was hopeless. She was hopeless.

And that’s how she felt – day in, day out, rain or shine, she felt such an intense hopelessness inside her.

She felt her existence was hopeless. She felt the days that passed were hopeless, and the days to come were even more so. She felt that waiting was hopeless, but doing was even more so. Everything around her was hopeless, and it didn’t matter how much she wanted this to change, no matter how much she sought help, no matter how many pills she popped, everything was still hopeless.

“Maybe you should make plans for the future,” he once suggested.

“Plans are hopeless. The future is hopeless. You and I are hopeless. This,” she motioned to the both of them, to their intertwined hands, to his other hand caressing her knee, “this is hopeless.”

And it pained him more and more each day, for he loved her the most. He loved her more than anything in this world. He loved her more than he loved his family. He loved her more than he loved himself. He wanted her to be happy, even if that meant he would be miserable.

And seeing her that way – degrading, worsening, the terribly miserable look in her green eyes, the delicate scrunching of the skin of her forehead that indicated a deep-rooted sorrow and dread. Seeing her like that made him miserable.

And in time he came to share the idea she had planted in their home. In time, he came to believe that everything was hopeless. Though he still loved her madly, he accepted the fact that his love for her was hopeless.

“Even though I love you,” she once whispered in bed, with her eyes closed and lips barely moving, “Even though I love you more than anything I have ever loved in this planet, it is hopeless.”

The disease, the deformity, found inside her had spread like wildfire. It consumed her body, mind and soul and it reached out with its bony hand to touch her lover and consume him with the same disease.

She wept day and night after the morning he didn’t wake up. She cried and she cried, and she blamed herself for it.

In his hand, along with the empty bottle of sleeping medication, was a crumpled paper that read, in his childish script, “It’s hopeless.”

The disease had set, and it had killed them. Though she was alive and physically healthy, she roamed her home and the streets with an even heavier sense of dread that it was all hopeless. She had become hopeless.

Though it took the life of the man she loved and though the hopelessness was still with her day and night, she finally realized that man’s existence is only hopeless when there is no love.

So, remember I was going to try to post a story every week?

Yeah, not doing that anymore. I'll post stories here sporadically and whenever I feel a story is good enough to be put out.

I've posted many half-assed stories over the past few months and I guess I just did it because part of me thought of it as my duty - to post something.

Well, I've come to realize nobody really reads the new things I put up and I get the feeling whoever does is doing it less and less.

I suppose this is a sort of hiatus for now.

Also, many of the things I've been writing lately have been extremely personal for many reasons. I've also been quite busy with cram school and whatnot and blah blah blah.

I'll post links to my older stories on twitter and Facebook and my tumblr blog, but I won't be posting anything new for now.

Feel free to go through the blog and read older stories and all that! Comment and tell me what you think on my older stories, you can even tweet me (@sheepneverlearn) how you feel I've improved or something or send me helpful tips!

Letters to Dad pt. 2

I watched you as you ran towards me, my arms outstretched ready to catch you. Your little fists were high above your head, and you had the biggest, most beautiful smile across your little face, glowing in the sun.

I heard you giggle when you finally toppled into my arms. I looked up at your father, his eyes filled with tears.

“Did you see that?” he said, “she walked!”
“She ran, darling,” I replied, still holding you.

And you, all giggles and smiles into my chest, looked up at me and turned to your daddy laughing. I felt you turning in my arms, ready to run again! I’ll admit my eyes swam in tears by then too.

“Come to daddy, Abby! Come, come!” He said, his voice quivering as the tears rolled down.

He was so proud of you, Abby.

You, still giggling, your little baby arms up trying to keep your balance, fell into his arms. In tears, he kissed you all over. I ran to you both, and that was when this picture was taken.

Your father and I smiling between tears and you, beautiful baby, smiling in your eyes and lips.

You were as proud of yourself as your dad and I were.

We couldn’t wait to be proud of you as you learned more and more, and grew older, always with a smile on your lips and your eyes.

The day he left, you cried all day, and kept hitting your little fists against your crib, whimpering, “papa, papa, papa.”

But, Abby, mum is very proud of you.

You are beautiful and bright.

Keep smiling. Keep smiling for mum.

Letters to Dad pt. 1

Dear Dad,

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have grown up with you. Would I turn out differently? Would my life be completely different?

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

I just turned 10 today. Mum told me she’s really proud of me. I’ve been doing well at school, but sometimes I wish you were here to be proud of me too.
I hope you’re proud of me somewhere.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Fourth grade is not as easy as I thought it would be. I’m not making many friends and a boy today told me you left mum and me because you didn’t love us enough. I wish you could’ve been there to tell him he was lying and that you love us very much.

But you’re not.

Abby.

Dear Dad,

It’s Father’s day this weekend and our teacher told us to make cards for our dads. It was kind of weird when someone said, “But Abby doesn’t have a dad.”
So I’m making a card for mum instead.

Are you coming back? Ever?
Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

It’s mum’s birthday today, so I tried making her a cake. It didn’t turn out very well, but mum was happy anyways. I gave her flowers I picked from the park.

I wonder what you would have given her.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Mum said your birthday is tomorrow, so I made you a card with stars and a drawing of our house. I told mum I was going to put it in the mail, because the mailman knows where everybody lives. She told me she’d do it herself, but I saw her throw it in the bin before I went to bed.

Why did she do that, dad?
Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

It’s my birthday today. I just turned 11! I checked the mail three times today, just to make sure you had sent me a present, but nothing came this year either.

I guess the mail lost it. But I’ll wait.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

I just turned 16. Mum baked me a cake and gave me flowers, just like when I tried baking her a cake a few years ago. They are beautiful, and the cake was delicious.

It’s summer again, and mum told me I took my first steps during summer too. She said you were there.

I wish you were here now.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

It’s been a few years since I’ve last written you. I’m off to college next week and I’m scared of leaving mum alone. She’s very lonely, and doesn’t have many friends. I’m scared of leaving too.

She’s my best friend. I wish you would come back to stay with her so I feel safer.

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Mum’s doing okay. I’m home from college now for Christmas. She looks tired. She showed me a picture of you today. We look alike. I wonder if you have a picture of me somewhere.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

College is hard. I’m trying my best, though. Mum sent me a letter the other day and she said how proud she was of me, just like when I graduated high school. She doesn’t talk much about you anymore. I guess she thinks you’re never coming back.

But I’m still waiting.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Mum is sick. We can’t afford the hospital bills on mum’s salary, so I’m dropping out to work.

We need you here.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Mum is getting worse. She cries a lot. I do too, but I don’t want her to see me crying. I have to be strong for her.

Would you be strong? Would you stay with her at the hospital day and night?

Abby.

Dear Dad,

I take mum flowers every day. I don’t want her to see flowers wilt. She told me you used to do the same thing when she was expecting.

She smiled today.

Love,

Abby.

Dear Dad,

I had to work a double-shift, and the flowers wilted.

Mum didn’t make it through the night.

I’m alone.

Please come back.

Abby.

Dear Dad,

Mum’s gone. I miss her. I miss my best friend. I feel so lonely.

I wish you were here…

Abby.

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I'll be posting the second part of this next week! :)

Joy of being alive

She was certain that there was only one joy in life, and that was to love and to be loved completely. However, as she lay sprawled out on the grass underneath the sun, squinting and breathing in deeply and slowly, she knew that her time would never come. And that a life without love was not a life worth living.

She continued through her days hopeful that her time would come, that she would meet someone who would love her unconditionally and with all his might, but a part of her – a quite big part, at that – knew that it would never happen. She knew that she would meet boys and men and that they would be together briefly, and lie to each other in the dead of night, whispering that they loved each other oh, so much, but she knew better than anyone else that it would soon end. And they would go on with their separate lives.

And somewhere, not far from her, there was a man with the same conviction. He spent his days reading books and playing music he loved, and every time he finished reading a book or playing a song, he would sit back and sigh, with the conviction that heroes and heroines may fall in love all they want, and musicians and artists will have their muses and their lovers and will live joyfully with the knowledge that someone, somewhere loves them, but he knew that would never happen to him.

And they lived their lives separately, unaware of each other’s existence, quietly suffering because of this conviction.

They once bumped on each other at a park, while he listened to music and she observed the colourful birds above her, and each mumbled an apology.

And for a moment, they locked gazes and for a moment, they knew. They knew they believed in the same thing, they knew that they were both loveless beings with the constant fear of dying alone. For a moment, they yearned to hold onto each other, to comfort each other; to allow each other to weep in desolation, for they both knew that they were destined for a lonely life.

But it was only for a moment. A flash of recognition, of understanding. For a moment, she wished to grab onto his t-shirt and yell, “I know how you feel!” and he craved to grab her hands and touch his forehead to hers, whispering that they would be fine, that being alone wasn’t so bad, to share for a few brief moments the notion that they both knew so well they were bound for loneliness.

But it was only for a moment. A flash of recognition, of understanding. He nodded at her, and she stared dazed at him, before moving on with their lives.

It was only a moment, a moment they shared. For a brief moment, they were not so lonely. For a brief moment, they were together and they would both remember for the rest of their lives that moment for what it had truly been. He would remember the sorrowful gaze of a young blonde girl, who was far too young to be so filled with such anguish. He would remember her dainty hands forming fists, and her catching her breath. She would remember a man with gloom surrounding his every move. She would remember his widened eyes.

They would remember that, for a brief moment, they had loved each other deeply and unconditionally. They would remember that, for a brief moment, they had not been so alone. And for that moment, being alive was not so painful.

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Comment and let me know what you think! :)

Different

It had really not been a different day the day you died. It had started out like any other day. You shuffled next to me in bed and I felt your arm slither across and around my waist, rolling me over to face you. You kissed me (despite my morning breath) and mumbled, “good morning,” with your eyes still closed. I stretched, still in your arms, and you nuzzled up to me. I carefully peeled your arms off me and kissed you on the forehead before making my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth and tie my hair.

Knowing you wouldn’t leave the bed so soon, I began making coffee and setting the table for breakfast. I picked out some strawberries (for me) and an apple (for you), and poured myself a bowl of cereal. I sat down and began reading the cereal box. A few minutes later, you appeared in the kitchen, dishevelled hair and shirtless, yawning and beautiful.

Those were always the moments when I realized why I fell in love with you.

You sat down wordlessly and stared at me. I put the cereal box between us and stared back, peeking over it. You did not move.

“You are absolutely beautiful.”

We had been together for 8 years, and I still could not stop myself from blushing or understand how loving and caring and amazing you were. Remarks like that always unsettled me.

You poured yourself some coffee and took the cereal box from my hands and began reading it.

That day – a Sunday, I recall – went the way all Sundays usually did. We had breakfast and lay lazily in bed until 3 PM, kissing, talking, reading, laughing, touching, panting, moaning, groaning.

At 3, the phone rang for you. You were needed at work. We showered together, and you left me at about 4.

You never came back.

In the midst of my terror and despair, I feared you had been in a car crash.

The truth is worse and more painful.

Man’s ability to hurt each other without remorse or shame will never cease to amaze me.

When leaving the office, you found yourself in the middle of a fight between two armed men. God knows why they decided to include you in their fight; god knows why they decided to hurt you.

Maybe you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I suppose it doesn’t matter why they did it. It only matters that they did it. That they hurt you. That they didn’t stop to think for a moment that you had a family, a lover, friends, a life.

Stabbed three times in the stomach and once in the chest, puncturing your lung.

I didn’t ask because I couldn’t bear to know for sure, but I imagine you felt intense pain that worsened by the second.

And to this day, it kills me. It kills me everyday to wake up on my own, without a kiss, without your arm around me. To eat, shower, read, sleep alone.

The house is empty.

Devoid.

Aching.

And sometimes, when I wake up, I forget for a second that you are dead. For a second, I like to pretend you decided to let me sleep in and I’ll find you in the bathroom or the kitchen.

And then it hits me.

We had lived together for eight years. We had created a routine, so dynamic and fitting to us both. We both knew we were destined to grow old together.

It’s been a year and three days now.

While all our friends understand my pain, they say I should go out. Meet new people.

Move on.

And as much as I cannot bear the pain I feel everyday and as much as I know in my bones moving on would relieve me of this pain, I don’t want to.

I don’t want to move on.

I don’t want to be in any arms that are not yours.

I don’t want to kiss anybody else.

I don’t want to create a new relationship, a new home.

I want you.

But you are gone. And there is no way to lure you back.

I can’t touch you. Ever again.

I can’t hear your voice or your laughter or feel your stubble rough against my skin in the morning or feel the smell of you, morning, noon and night.

I’ll never, ever, have you back.

I miss you so much.

---

Written in a bathtub in Argentina, after a visit to Cementerio de la Recoleta, after a witnessing a very touching scene - an old man taking flowers to his wife (but that's what I like to think. Maybe it was somebody else).

I've been writing more consistently now, but I've been picking out with more care and caution the stories I want to post, which is why I've been so absent lately...

I need to forget.