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At first he was broken and it was fine. It was all fine.
He knew of only me.
Spoke to only me.
Looked at only me.
I was his whole world.
When he got better things changed. His world widened and he started reaching out. He started spreading from the dark and into daylight. Touching, learning, and experiencing.
Without me.
He would come running excitedly and tell me all the things he’d done in a day. Day, where I could not follow. He would babble and laugh and it was ice shards down my back. It was ticks of cold sucking at my spine and itching somewhere high in my brain, close to the scalp.
I asked why once.
His eyes lit so bright that the vermin inside me shrieked and stung at each and every nerve.
To see the world for himself, he said. To live like he’d never been able to before. There was so much to do, so much fun to be had! And oh the children, how he wished I could also hear them laugh! It was music that one could sing to! Their smiles just as wondrous, soothing, warming, something that would make even me glad. He said he loved the world, precious and beautiful thing that it was, and that he would show me so that I may love it in turn. He would go and see it all, learn all there was to know, and then he would come back to weave stories and murals of frost for me. We would be able to live in the world together then.
He would go, but he would surely come back.
…surely, he would come back.
He glanced away from me, towards the outside, and I found myself screaming along with the vermin as wet softness burst beneath my nails and sticky red froze into my fingertips.
No. No light of day for either of us. No leaving. There could be no wandering the world to find music in a laugh, or solace in the balm of children’s smiles. Not now. Not ever. I would make it so he could not leave. Surely now he would know it was useless, would realize the wretchedness of his so-called world. He would understand and he would never leave.
Or so I thought.
***
I wait here, for he is long gone. His eyes are in a jar I keep within my ribcage as I rest by a great blank wall. I lie rigid and forever still, waiting for him and the murals of frost he promised me.
For surely he will come back.
Won’t he?