02 January 2013 fiction, "Death My Love"

To love someone more than you love yourself is something so beautiful and unexpected. It means to look at them, and the explanation is simple—if they were to disappear, your only option would be to disappear as well. It’s something terrific and terrifying. That someone could be so important that without them you might as well not even exist.

It’s so hard to remind yourself that one day they will be nothing. One day you will lose them. You will lose their beautiful smile with its own personality and imperfections. No one will remember their favorite color, no one will remember what it sounded like when they laughed. Their soft voice won’t ever surprise you again. You won’t remember what it was like when they told a story, the way their eyes would light up and their hands would wave in such a display that you couldn’t listen to what their mouth said.

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You will no longer have him, and he will no longer have anyone, because it will all be gone. Devastating as it is, it is a fact of life, that all of it will eventually cease to exist. The cycle will continue and there will be more people, but there will never be another one of him. Your heart will feel so empty you will wonder what it felt like when it was full. You curse yourself for not making the good times perfect, though your mind will gently remind you that no one can ever achieve perfection. It will chastise you softly for hurting yourself this way.

What was his favorite food? It will hurt like nothing you’ve ever felt to realize that you can’t remember. You will sit on the floor in your pantry, begging the canned foods and the pretzels and the cookies to let you remember. Memories are all you have left of him, and it is so sad to realize no matter how hard you cling, he is too slippery to remain in your grasp forever.

How can you go on, you wonder, as you turn out the light and lie awake staring at the dark ceiling. He isn’t here, and right now it is only him that your body, mind, and soul yearn for.

Each day you wake up, you feel the numbness, the forgetfulness, seeping in, and you wish only to sleep because sleep is the only refuge. What is the point of being alive, you wonder, and you can’t escape the glare of the sweet release.

You wish for your last thoughts to be those with him in them, so you close your eyes and let the memories overtake you. It’s sickening at first, because it’s everything you wished never to forget while you were terrified to remember. His smile, his laugh, his jokes, and it’s all so beautiful.

It’s almost the end, you realize, when all of a sudden you remember what his favorite food is. The knife clatters to the floor and a guffaw escapes your lips. You fall back onto the cool kitchen tiles and you laugh loudly, beautifully, and without a single other thought than that stupid memory that saved you.