SOMETHING
“Please say something to save us, anything.” She begged him because she still held on to a glimmer of hope that there was something within him that was worth staying for. She hoped beyond hope that the light she once saw inside him would shine forth at this most crucial moment.
“I’m sorry, I have nothing left...I can’t think of anything,” his reply was empty because his heart was empty and hollow. The love that filled it to the brim was gone, he couldn’t give something that he did not have.
“You’re not even going to try?” She cried because her heart was breaking, she didn’t want it to be over like this but what else was there that she could do?
“It used to hurt to wake up the next day, it used to hurt just to look at you and realize that my touch meant nothing because someone else’s touch muted mine. It hurt because even if I did do something about my hurt I knew that it was useless because it wouldn’t bring you back, but one day I realized that the hurt was going to kill me and so I had to stop feeling. Do you understand? I can’t do anything to open myself up enough to try and save us because I don’t want to hurt again.…it might kill me. So, yeah...I’m not going to try.” He was earnest and there was no argument to counter that statement.
“I have enough love for the both of us, Henry.… I do.…I have enough to save the both of us. I’ll be there for you and I’ll hold you and love you until you feel safe enough to open up and have feelings again. I’ll be here for you and help you love again, I will.” A rush of emotion came over her, she knew this was the answer for both their emotional salvation.
“Say that you do those things for me and that I do love again.…what if it’s not you that I end up loving Sylvia? Are you still going to be there for me?” There was no malice that motivated what Henry said, it was an honest question.
“No Henry, you have to love me! You have to love us! I’m trying to save us! I was wrong Henry, I know that now and I want what we have because it was good, it IS good! Let me help you love me again, please?” Sylvia’s tears would have melted Henry in a second had it been a year ago but now if he let himself be wet by the water from her eyes it would only drown him until he couldn’t breathe. He’d drown in her and nothing of himself would remain, he couldn’t do it again. That’s how he ended up in the parking lot of their apartment building one night, praying to the night sky to bring him his own death because the hurt was too unbearable.
“I can’t Sylvia, I can’t love you anymore...I can’t think of you, I can’t contemplate you. I can’t use any of my six senses when it comes to you, I’m sorry.” Henry rose from his computer chair and moved around Sylvia in order to pour himself a glass of water from the refrigerator. After doing that, he reached up into the kitchen cabinet to retrieve his medication. Two pills before going to sleep and two when he woke.
“Henry, I don’t want to grow old by myself, I want you with me,” Sylvia was reaching now, she was desperate and she began to say desperate things.
“Only one of us is going to grow old Sylvia,” Henry’s medication had a way of taking a very quick effect and it knocked him out in less than a minute.
….………
Henry’s morning was filled with the regular routine of coffee, reading the paper, heading to the gym, coming back home to check on his investments online and then playing the market. Luckily, the two pills in the morning did not cloud his mind from work, what it did do was help him deal with Sylvia’s ghost. He was getting better at it every day, by heeding the advice of a Kahuna who was counseling him through the process of slowly helping his ex-deceased girlfriend Sylvia move to the light. It wasn’t something that was going to happen overnight but what could Henry do? A year ago, he got home early from work and found Sylvia and his best friend on his couch together, Henry ran into his room and retrieved a gun, he and his former best friend Gerald struggled for the gun and somehow Sylvia got in the way and she was shot and killed. Not soon after, her ghost appeared and began to haunt Henry with the same conversation every day.
“Please say something to save us...anything.” She begged him because she still held on to a glimmer of hope that there was something within him that was worth staying for. She hoped beyond hope that the light she once saw inside him would shine forth at this most crucial moment.
“I’m sorry, I have nothing left...I can’t think of anything,” his reply was empty because his heart was empty and hollow. The love that filled it to the brim was gone, he couldn’t give something that he did not have.
No comments:
Post a Comment