Apoptosis
The credits started rolling, the show has ended. She stands up to take out her contacts and get ready for bed. I look at my phone to check the time, half past ten. I’m not tired but we have to get up early so that I can drop her of at the airport. I can’t believe this time has come again, it feels like yesterday that she went to visit her folks.
I hear her feigning joy in the bathroom with a song but I know it’s not real. I know what she feels, because I feel it too. The air hangs thick with dread and avoidance. Like a child walking down a dark corridor to its room. If it doesn’t look at the shadows it can pretend the fear is not there. But we both know that sooner or later we have to face it.
As she comes back to the living room I try to entice her to sit with me for another drink and a smoke, preventing the inevitable “going to bed”. I think that if we just stay up then tomorrow won’t come. I know that if we go to bed we have to sleep and if we sleep tomorrow will come. She declines, “I’m sorry but I have to sleep”. I know she does. As we get into bed there’s a silence the weight of the world. Before she moved here to live with me we would only see each other for a week or two every six months or so, now we are only apart for two or three weeks twice a year. These feelings now seem silly when compared to those times, but that doesn’t make them go away. They’re real and getting worse each time. Is this our love getting stronger, more connected? My heart, a cauldron of emotion unlocked. I try to cover it with a lid but it gets harder and harder as the departure approaches. I wonder to myself if all lovers feel this way. I comfort myself that they do but it’s only a plaster for a gaping wound. I think of my parent’s generation that had to do this often when the men went to the army for training, compulsory in their day. My folks were married for two weeks when my father was conscripted. I feel weak and immature when I can’t bear three weeks without her. “when are you coming down to visit me?” “as soon as I can” I lie to comfort her. I know that I can’t go down or even get leave from work. We lie chatting for ten odd minutes when she says goodnight and puts of the lights. I watch the shadows on the walls. Peaceful. Emotionless. Content in their ignorance. Eventually I face the night and close my eyes. “These mornings always seem to come sooner than the others” I think to myself as I get out of bed. The air even thicker now. As though the cold of the night congealed it to solidity. We quickly finish up and get in the car to go to the airport. On the way there our words are few and far between. They get stuck in the air I guess. “Remember to make yourself lunch for work” she reminds me. “And please drive safe while I’m away”. I tear up but quickly hush it away. I have to be strong for us. Never fails to amaze me how the little things are the ones you miss most in times such as these. Like looking through a microscope and noticing that the mortar that holds together a wall are only small stones and chemical reactions. I drop her off and head home. The house is empty and silent. The air still hangs thick as mud but there seems to be a void that it struggles to fill. A void that I notice in everything I do. I dangle a carrot in front of my mind to lead it onto other paths, but every now and then it rebels and takes me to her. Curse this love! Curse the heart and the evolution of emotion! In these times I envy people that are single. I would not wish love upon my worst enemy. When she’s gone I never seem to have an appetite. When she is here I never want to sleep, but now I always sleep. Perhaps a subconscious effort to make time pass by faster. I get into bed and think to myself, “If I can’t be alone for two weeks after 5 years, how will I manage when she passes after sixty!?”. A selfish thought peers in, “I wish to pass first”. A thought that is like a shadow in the corner of your eye. You can’t see it but you know it is there and when you look it’s gone. I drift off. The days drag on as if illuminated by the midnight sun. Fortunately I get to go to work for nine hours and keep my mind busy there, but the nights are when I struggles the most. As a Mexican Petunia I live for the phone call every night. It always comes but never lasts. The void in the air is only filled momentarily and reappears instantly as a light switched off. I think it is the void that keeps me going. After all, it is defined by the heavy air. It gives it shape and meaning. Finally the day arrives when I fetch her again. We embrace in the crisp morning air. The world feels balanced and as it should be. I mourn for the people that have not felt this. A cauldron of love and joy that cannot be matched by anything else. I feel alive and rejoice in humanity and all of its evolution. I hope that no enemy of mine will ever feel this glory. I sense the relief from both of us. An ethereal but tangible connection of ecstasy. A thought peers in like a shadow in the corner of one’s eye, “she will leave again sooner than expected”. But those are thoughts for a future me and a future her, and I lock them away once again.