Written for a challenge at Shadowplay, where poems serve as prompts for the stories. This is thus inspired by Wallace Stevens' The Idea of Order at Key West.
tw: death of a loved one
Sometimes, he thinks she's still there.
He wakes up in the middle of the night, and immediately his body yearns for the warmth of hers. He scoots closer, eyes closed, because he smells her on his pillow. His hand reaches for the curve of her hips, for the fabric of her favorite pajamas that clothes her skin which smelled of rosewater—but then he stops.
He stops because his brain tells him, right before his fingers are seared by reality, that she's not there.
She's not there.
She's not there, John.
Mary's gone.
And he feels as if someone has just hollowed out his chest, like someone has carved out his heart and left him bleeding on the cold of his bed. It happens quite frequently. Not as bad as it was after the incident, but still frequent nonetheless. The shrink says it will get easier in time, but...
He doesn't like laying there so he gets up. He gets up and slips on his house shoes (although the absence of her makes his muscles and lungs ache) and traverses the incomprehensibly long hallway to see about Rosie. Sherlock would make some snide remark about him renting this overly spacious beach house and ugh, why are Americans always so gratuitous in everything, but John doesn't really care.
He can't care right now. He doesn't want to.
It brings a smile to his face when he sees his daughter sleeping soundly, the lower half of her body wrapped around the Little Mermaid beach towel Mrs. Hudson had gifted her before they left London. Rosie absolutely adores the ocean. It worried him at first that she would be terrified of the water and all the planning would have been for naught, but that feeling went away when he heard her laugh.
He still remembers the look of surprise and glee on her little face when a wave of cool water rolled in and rushed past her little toes. She was so happy, giggling as she squatted down to touch the ebbing sleeve of the ocean as if she's discovered the secret to life.
The plan is to stay there a week with her. Sherlock has complained and sulked about it, insisting that there are cases they needed to solve. Thankfully, Molly had promised him in secret that she would do the best she can to cover for him (to pacify the rather childish detective, really) so he can spend as much time as he needs in Florida with his daughter.
Molly's really the only person who understands, he thinks. Or, maybe, the most tolerant and accommodating of all. It shouldn't be that surprising. Out of his close friends, she's the only one who's known grief in its purest form. She's gone through it with her father's death. Maybe that longing is the closest kin to the strange reality he experiences right now.
John walks over to the back of the house then opens the doors to the deck. Salty breeze, cool and calming against his skin, rushes in. The ocean spans before him, the constant waves singing a sweet, unchained serenade to the stars above.
He crosses his arms, and for a moment he remembers the feel of Mary's fingers in his hand. She's never had the best circulation, and they've always joked that with the two of them suffering from the same condition, they would need to invest in a lifetime supply of hand warmers. There were times when he didn't want to hold her hand, especially in winter, because they made him colder. It vexed her to see him act that way.
If he had known then how much he would crave those lost moments now, he would have held her hand tightly even if he was freezing.
He would have held her hand forever.
But things have turned out this way, and there's no going back. Now all he has are memories and broken dreams of her, as blinding and crushing as the bottom of the sea.