"I am ten times undone, while hope, and fear, and grief, and rage and love rise up at once, and with variety of pain distract me." - Joseph Addison
Al Niente
I don't know how long I've been sitting here.
It's cold, a bitter cold that tears into my bones, feeding on the marrow. I'm too cold to shiver, too numb to pull my jacket close.
My knees are drawn to my chest, my arms crossed over me. But my head is up, eyes focused across the room.
I think I hear his voice and I turn toward the ever-widening silence. It's strangely dark in here, darker than it should be this time of day. Maybe there's a storm outside.
I try to concentrate, to remember how I got here and can't. I don't remember anything, not the day or the month or even why I'm in this building. Somewhere there's a feeling of being hunted, or perhaps being the hunter. I remember sounds before the silence came- guns firing, something hitting the ground. I lose focus again, drifting back in the white-darkness filling up my head.
Somewhere within that world I find him, see him as if from very far away, a few steps across a room, a few feet from my hands.
He's lying curled beside the wall, hands flung open to his sides, face set in an almost gentle expression. Only his legs look twisted, one foot bare, blue sneaker resting a short distance away. A faint breeze from under the warehouse door lifts the edges of his curls, tangles in them. I would do the same sometimes, comfort for him like a mother stroking a child's head, but drawing strength from it for myself. He looks asleep, resting like a little boy, but my blurred eyes see the scarlet halo outlining his body, laid out like the chalk lines drawn around a corpse.
I see him laughing, running along the beach. I see him at the birthday party, at the school dressed up and playing his part to the hilt. I see him cradling a kitten against his heart, tossing Rosie up in the air and hearing her laugh. I feel his hand holding mine, arms crushing me against his jacket. That's the way I want to see him, the only way I want it to be.
There's a sharp pain in my chest, lancing through me. I don't recall being shot, don't feel any blood on the hand I press there. I don't know why I would hurt.
I've been sitting here for ten minutes but I can't make myself get up. I'm not strong enough to stand alone. For now I just want to sit here, to replay the memories in my mind until I believe there will be more.
Because eventually I'll have to walk the distance across the room and discover what I already know.