It shouldn't have been sunny. I didn't deserve the sun as I stood upon the podium, note in hand, looking out at a sea of faces, so clear in the sunlight of an honest March day. It should have been pouring, to blur the faces, to conceal the flow of my own personal rain that nobody needed to see or feel just like I didn't need to see or feel them, either. That wasn't the way he planned it, or the way that I promised it would be, and he would know. I know he would.
The oak beneath my fingers felt steady yet weak, just like me, silent and sullen. Bloodshot eyes and grey faces dared to stare in wait, but I couldn't. Nothing seemed to work as the finality of it all settled down. The speech on the paper that rested on the oak did not even begin to scratch the surface of what I felt, and I found myself turning around to stare at the closed casket. He wouldn't be shown. I didn't deserve his beauty.
Without a word, I stepped off the podium, away from the crying people and the reporters and the cameras. I didn't deserve to speak, just like I didn't deserve to stand at the podium or have the sun shine on me, or even be there, at that moment, for that reason.
It was my fault. I heard him scream, I watched him fall, and I stood there. Gone, he was, his silver eyes vacant and his skin not the vibrant white it once was. I could tell in an instant, and it was like my own heart stopped beating, my soul screaming out for its second body. Gone.
But it truly didn't sink in until the coffin with the closed door bearing his coat of arms was viewed. And then what I had to say didn't matter and it didn't come close to what I felt. No word could come close to what I felt.
The sun was still shining and the crowd was still watching. My hand, palm down, pressed against the glossy surface. My stomach flipped, and I would have hurled if I could eat. I didn't trust my mouth to speak but my eyes deceived me. They knew. I didn't try to correct them with lies that I so carefully constructed.
My knees buckled, and my body shook as I fell harshly on the soft grass beside it. It awaited me, like I knew it would, like I planned it would. I closed my eyes and allowed myself one last memory. I deserved that much.
A gentle brushing of the lips, his fingers dancing along my chest. "Is this what we're destined to be? Nightly meetings and fabricated hatred?"
"Of course not. We'll get through this. After it's all over, we'll be so happy together. We just have to get through the war."
"What if one of us doesn't make it?"
"Of course we'll make it. We always have."
An unknown lie. The phrase, in repeat, turned over and over before slipping away completely. Of course we'll make it. We always have.
