[F4A] Just Another Day in the Year
Today. Today it will have been another three hundred and sixty-five days around a star we call the sun. Most people will just treat it as another day, and truth be told I should as well.
But I won’t.
Because… because it’s been three hundred and sixty-five since we officialized us, again. I’ll open the bottle of wine we were saving and sift through old pictures, old texts and old voice-notes as I cling to the past. At least, at least it’s a Sunday so I won’t have to call in sick for work like last year - my little silver lining.
And so here I am once more, fingertips tracing over your smile from that time we finally saved up enough for a tropical vacation. I can feel my lips tugging at the edges into a faint wistful smile as I remember, far too fondly, just how badly we got sunburned. The soft chuckle escapes into the empty room, a single tear falling down my cheek as I reach up to touch my neck in reminiscence at just how much it burned and how we childishly pat each other in jest, refusing to admit how silly it was. As much as I complained about how the sand got everywhere and how the sun really did take it out of me, with you around I could never pry that smile off my face. Especially not when yours was so enchanting.
The droplet hits the frame, the darkened wood at the bottom bearing the signs wear from the countless splashings it has borne. Another, falling from grace and giving way to another to take its place along the edge of my chin. Another, crashing down and splattering helplessly against the glass sheath. I can still remember how we sat on the shore with a burning bonfire and its gentle crackling to mark the passing of time, just you and me watching the stars with the soothing rhythm of the waves, huddled in silence and whispering sweet nothings to one another until the sun broke the horizon. Another drop, another faint smile and another cherished memory.
And like all things, it will fade with time, cast into the abyss and swallowed up by the void until only the barest traces remain, and even they will eventually succumb to the undoing of time. No, not all things fall to time. Perhaps I just haven’t given it enough, but the wound, however old the days insist it on being, still stings freshly as if nothing has changed. Except it has. I’m sitting here alone with a T-shirt that has long lost your scent, unwashed and tear stained over the countless days with the occasionally reapplication of your favourite.
Funny, before you perfume and cologne were things I never paid attention to. With you, I came to enjoy them. After you I now have empty bottles lying around from the times I tried to recapture the fleeting sensation, a single whiff was all I needed after that day to break down and truly realise you were no longer here, the shellshock losing its grip. The comfort of the smell dulled long ago, but still I desperately try to renew it with each dashing of the rapidly emptying bottle upon the fabric.
There it was, like clockwork. My throat, no longer able to keep back the storm as the dark clouds over the edges of the blackened ocean finally rolled in, let out the inevitable cry that unlocked the ducts and really allowed me to bawl. A strangled sound, wordless and yet telling of so much, of the depth of the dagger slowly twisting as the minutes ticked by, of the suffering and wanting to truly just… You wouldn’t have wanted this of me, you would have wanted me to move on, to live life as I did with… with you. Only without you.
Only without you it all seems so pointless.
See you there.
The final message with two little ticks next to it. I can’t keep count of how many times I’ve re-read everything you’ve sent me. From the cutesy first few words where we awkwardly danced around each other, both too afraid to really talk about anything all the way to the smileys and hearts that were soon to follow. It’s torture, one I willingly inflict upon myself as I dredge up memories best left forgotten and untouched, the smile wavering with trembling lips.
The wine helps a little, but not enough. I know I’m just being a stubborn child who’s unwilling to take no for an answer but: I want you. I don’t want the wine, I don’t want the words of consolation, I don’t want anything but you. I want don’t want to be me, I want to be us.
But it won’t happen.
So I’ll drink until I can’t read anymore. I’ll sob up against the wall and sit beneath the running water of the shower until it turns cold. I’ll look through the pictures, I’ll play the voice-notes you sent me and I’ll read the words you wrote.
And then I’ll cry myself to sleep. And that will be it, just another day, one of many in the three hundred and sixty-five that go by each year. But it won’t be, because it’s not ‘just another day’.
It’s our anniversary.
The heart wants what it cannot have. I want you.
Posted May 15, 2016, 4:38 PM UTC