Hanging in Rows

I throw caution to the wind but there is no breeze to catch it. It only drops back to earth at my feet, limp and dying. I have done wrong by this allegory so I look to my corrector for help. He is, as always, silent. But I feel his eyes on me all the same, taking in this leisurely fall. He never condemns. Neither does he encourage.

A strained partnership now, yet one they cannot wrestle away from me. I hold fast, like a child knotting the thin string of a balloon around the wrist. This speck of brightness is all I have and it cannot be permitted to float away.

I talk to him, careful not to do so aloud. I get enough sympathy without adding the appearance of psychosis. Their reminders assure me that they know; know my failing, my frailty. They mention daily that he is gone, which does to stop me from trying.

A closet full of darkness hanging in rows. I shouldn't mourn. He is still here. Somewhere.

I am the source of worry, done in secret with darting eyes and the kind of whispers that carry further than they realize. I'm not to know they watch for the few signs that slip. Perhaps there is entertainment in my buried distress. So many things to bury.

We spend a lifetime with a shovel in hand, waiting for the next sin, mistake hope to commit to the ground. I sank my past far in the crevice and then shoved my future in after it. There are many inches of dirt between us and yet, at times, I feel his sigh against my neck. He must be deep in eternity. He leaves me in hell.

They think I will end this. I wonder if they believe I should. They think it is love that torments me. I wonder if we'd ever gotten that far. They think I'm obsessed. I wonder if being haunted deserves less than fixation.

There are bridges with the vastness of the tide rushing beneath. There are guns, knives, bombs that others play with. How easy to stand in their way, to force a stranger's hand. But I am resolved to maintain my life, such as it is. Because sometimes his ghost accepts my invitation. Sometimes I feel...

However false, it is enough to keep me here. Abandoning this life means forsaking those sparse, imagined moments when, in confusion and desperation, I feel him. I have no delusions about the alternative. When age-blind eyes finally close to this world, I will not find him. These bare seconds will be burned away in a fire that I've earned. He cannot come down. I cannot go up. The separation will be permanent and there's no immediacy to usher in such a forever.

I will not be able to speak his name for all the screaming.

At least here, among pitying friends and near his resting place, I can pretend. This will be the way to madness. He never speaks now, even when I sit by the stone and trace blemishes on the surface. I am not disappointed; it would be the final proof of insanity. But mostly I fear what he would say. That I've held on too long to something that never was, that never would have been. That he was never mine to lose. I held onto him too long that day and the weight remains a bruise on my arms.

I surround myself with those who did not know him, so he cannot be reflected back to me in their eyes. Those who loved him are avoided, so they cannot recognize by the shell how far my soul has decomposed under the burden of this haunting. A stray bullet. Friendly fire. My fault.

I am not celibate.

I find that his former habits have a modicum of merit; staving off loneliness without bothering to seek connection. Occasionally one will stay beyond usefulness, suffocating me with their insignificant presence. They think draping a heavy arm across my waist brings meaning to the post-activity minutes. I leave them to my bed, naked and lacking. For appearance's sake, I allow a few to linger for additional night, but in the end, they look like intruders. He never did, those few times we split a mattress. I know how he would have looked tonight. And myself. Protected. Owned. Satisfied.

In solitude I cradle his spirit, a thing undiminished by death - he's persistent that way. It was too big, too complete even in brokenness. It has the power to jar me into living and console me when I fail.

Moving on means giving up the search for the soul so near at hand.

I am guided by the dead, beholden to every shiver for which he gets blame and thanks. I like to think that he enjoys touching me so much that even in heaven he can find no more delightful target. I am far from worthy, but I am greedy.

It was raining that day.

No, that's not right. Memory fits the mood and revisions are easy. I don't like to recall that the sun had presided over my error, the ground so dry that it had absorbed his blood faster than he could spill it, leaving no pool or puddle for me to kneel in. I should have gone home with stains on my knees. I should have gone with him then, before it was too late, before others had held me aloft as an example of mental solidity. How well I seemed to cope. It hadn't taken long, that first crack. Perhaps they avoid me too.

The sound of his voice is forgotten. I don't deserve to hear it. But his knuckles under my chin press my eyes upward to face each day, the sun, the grass, the wind I cannot catch. He must think I'll never find what is sought by this inward existence.

As usual he is wrong. I scan this empty shell for this shred, this fiber of him, this molecule that wasn't taken when I...

It's the part I hid from fate when it came to claim him. It is my balloon, tied so tightly to my wrist that the circulation of the outer world is cut off. It will not float away.