Disclaimer: The characters in this story are owned by Rumiko Takahashi.


Things He Cannot See Anymore

He searches through his thoughts, listening for a voice long lost to him, blinking for a smile so dear. Almost the moment she dies every detail of her blends together, losing shape and form. Words, voices, and statements that are most important when she breathes, are now nearly indiscernible as he swims the sea of memories.

He knows that he should retain every trait with astounding sharpness, but finds that he can no longer hear tunes of her voice, reminisce about valuable things she says or glimpse her sun warm skin. Everything immediately muddles, lost to grief, pain, and despair.

Sparsely, he touches the sound of her melodies, recollect things she tells him; scarcely see her. That is rarely. Desperately seeking his mind to bring forward stronger pictures and noises, he finds that he gives in to the waves of scattered then melded knowledge. The further he pushes for accurate memories; he only receives a dulling headache, one that contrasts sharply with the ache of his heart.

With heaviness even great for him, he believes that he fails her, just as time fails them.

With the passage of suns and moons, he attempts, daily, to recall her with astute accuracy. To recall the things he cannot see anymore.

The illusions of her escape him, twirling from his reach, leaving him alone to force imaginary, to foggy recurrences, to medleys of the most memorable.

It is seeing into nothingness one night, when it occurs that the facts of his memory are as lost to time as she is, so long ago have they taken place. And it is with this realization that he knows that the one true memory he has is of her.