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Why am I still standing stock still here? I’m like a dear standing in the road, a car barreling towards me and I stand unmoving. He’s already gone and he’s not coming back. I felt my face burn and my eyes sting with what was quickly going to become a stream of tears. The world was getting blurry as water flooded my vision, I tentatively closed the door. I felt the handle, it was cold like he’d never existed, like he’d never touched the handle.
I’d lost people before this, everyone has. Losing and gaining people is part of life, nobody is permanent. He had been everything to me, he was my world, he was- I didn’t have and probably would never have the words to explain how much he meant to me. I trudged over to the couch and lay down. Fitting I was wearing all black, ready for the funeral.
Was the funeral for me or him? I don’t know, it probably has to do with your perspective. I think it’s mine and his memories but he’d probably say there wasn’t one. I’m being dramatic and overreacting to it all. Dramatic just like a Shakespeare play, the refrence brought a stab of emotional pain to my gut. A knife was being twisted in my gut. He’d never cared for fancy words, purple prose, or poetry.
I probably sounded like a wounded boar, wheezing and crying and sniffling like I’d been sent to death. By now my entire lower face was covered in tears. I hugged a pillow into my chest, it was my lifeline to the world. It was a bouey in storm of emotions that seemed intent on drowning me. It just kept coming, it seemed like the waves would never stop. There was no weathering this storm as it came in full force.
The eyes were on me, I found I couldn’t escape their sight. They judged ,they leered, they were unrelenting. I pressed my face harder into the couch, I wished that even for a second everything would be normal again. He’d be there, his eyes looking at me with that hopeful twinkle. A hopeful twinkle his dark brown eyes had lacked as he left me.
The lights were cream coloured spotlights intent on blinding me. Shards of colour stabbed my eye in quick succession, eager to cause me even more pain. My eyes blearily drifted to my phone laying on the adjacent table. Should I pick it up? The Lock Screen, the camera roll, the text messages. This thing was just one reminder of him, of the one I thought would be by my side until we were both just decrepit tombstone in some cemetery.
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It’s been a day since he left. The eyes were still on me, well I wrote, well I worked, well I did about anything. Some of the eye shift, some of the creatures left but it was very little out of the entity. The cluster of them was still intent on watching me. A bird in a cage forced to sing to entertain.
Vocal cords strained, wings soar, surrounded only by observers and darkness. The sky was so close but felt forever unreachable. Light pastel blue with fluffy cotton cloud slowly drifting. Free from the chains of everything, carefree and in the right place. The currents of winds carried them to where they needed to go.
Meanwhile I fought against the chains and shackle, slowly being consumed by tar. Weighed down by dozens and dozens of ton, it was like a backpack I could never take off. Everyone could float yet I was stuck rooted to the ground, a foreign place I pretended was my home.
He used to be home, my warm hearth. I built myself anew for him, and now he was gone. He was never going to return but I still hoped he would. Maybe the knob would turn and I’d see his twinkling coffee coloured eyes. Maybe my stormy blue ones would lock with his and we’d embark again.
A small sailboat going off into the massive never ending ocean. Schools of fish united unlike me and him, their scales shimmered and shone. Seagulls flying near shore to return to their young, the amount of care was heartwarming. That’s not what happened though and I knew it.
He embarked on his voyage, but he took a cruise and it was a one was trip. I was the lone plover left on the beach watching the ship depart. It was so big compared to me. According to him I would never really understand it, though he never did give me a chance to try to.
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It’s been two weeks since he left me. No flower I see looks the same, they all looked like mockeries of his beauty. He always said he loved red carnations. The carnation in the pot located in my kitchen had started to wither, losing their beauty and life. Just like our once strong relationship.
I couldn’t make myself get rid of them yet. It felt like I was stuck looking back to the rear view mirror and unable to look ahead. I’d always had issues with dwelling and brooding. Sitting in my room going through it all over and over until my mum called me asking if I was free for dinner.
Sometimes I wrote my feelings out onto paper then ripped or crumbled them. You could tell how much emotional anguish I was in by how full the bin was. It was just like you could tell who had become my latest muse by examining my poems and the chalk art scattered on the pavement.
People said time heals all wounds, well I’d like to disagree. Unless time was a bandaid, hot cocoa, and warm blanket it meant nothing to me right now. Why was I keeping track of when he left? I don’t know, maybe for some arbitrary reason or motive that even I wasn’t aware of.
Had he looked back? Did he regret the choices he made just like I did? I thought I had been enough for him, what could I have done to make him stay? I thought our journeys would align they had diverted, like cars veering onto opposing paths to two completely different destination.
I sat lost in thought for an eternity. The nonexistent shadows of people I’d never met were still, quite a few seemed to have left just like he had. The rest watched with even move intense stares, like I was their entertainment. I hated it, I felt rage and pain coarse through my veins, red just like blood.
He used to like red, I always thought it was an angry colour but he felt it was to him at least more about passion. He’d smiled just like a little kid as he talked about it. Just like me when I bore him to death with my tales of poets and plovers. Immersed in the world of sonnets and villanelles, singing balled of nostalgia for stuff I’d never experienced.
Had he ever really cared about me? I swear he did but it had always felt he never really did care about me and the plover pictures I’d painted for him. As I thought this is turned and looks at the miniature birds on my mantle, I intently looked at the Killdeer and Kentish plover I’d aligned next to each other.
They were together unlike me and him, their big black eyes twinkling just like his had. Soft and caring eyes that felt like they could see into my soul. Soft dark brown hair with some curls that made him feel full of joy and whimsy. Just like a Kentish running across the sand, he’d loves the beach just like he’d loved the carnation.
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It’s been two entire years, I guess I’ve moved on. I stretch as I get up from my oak desk. There are a lot of poems there, some finished and completed others were mere drafts. It felt nice to pursue my hobby, to shoot for the moon and land among the stars. As I stacked and organized the papers I heard the familiar buzzing of my phone.
A box that once held memories of one person now held pictures and experiences of so many more wonderful people. I soundly trade those memories for the world. Memories of the fireworks during Fourth of July, the bright light and loud pops that sounded like the world’s largest popcorn kernels. Memories of watching one of my best friends hold their baby girl for the first time. The one I had treasured the most though was when I’d gotten to see my sister for the first time in 5 years. We had been hugging and crying and been such a mess.
I didn’t feel the eyes anymore, they’d stopped observing and left me to live free like a bird. Spread my wings and take flight, feel the wind through my wings. I was no longer barred and alone in the bird cage. The chains and shackles that teather me to the floor have been unlocked.
The poet’s plover is free.