It's been longer than I planned. I'm sorry.
This isn't much.
The night is coming to an end, the gray is meeting the black. The street lights buzz and they serve as a silver light, somewhat like the absent moon. The dimming light takes me back to a time where I could barely see my best friends as their tan skin blended with the night but their bright clothes stood out like beacons.
I sit outside in the silence of the coming night, listening, thinking too much, smoking too much. Every now and then the breeze picks up and rustles a nearby tree. I watch it, feeling like the leaves are trying to tell me something. In the industrial light the street lamp provides, I can see the leaves looking at me and every time they move I feel as if they have a purpose. I feel like every time the wind blows, it's for a reason. Maybe the trees and the wind and the world are trying to tell me where she has gone. Or maybe I'm just so desperate I cling on to any shred of hope.
I toe the unraveled hose at my feet. My mother recently watered her garden and the hose lays in a figure eight. It reminds me that my mother and my father are living on as they always have, yet this chaos is brewing in my life. When did things change? When did they stop becoming so aware of every little event in my life and just keep living as if nothing ever nothing is really going on? It brings me comfort and sadness. Life goes on, but seemingly only outside of my own hell.
I can hear children screaming with joy off in the distance of the small neighborhood. Maybe they're running through the shocking water of a lawn sprinkler or playing hide and seek. Maybe they're losing their friendships as I sit outside smoking, trying to remember when I lost mine.
The scent of recently cooked family meals floats on the warm summer breeze. Lasagna, steak, potatoes. Comfort food is floating through my childhood, yet the smell brings anything but comfort. When did I become so restless and cynical? When did I become that lone man standing in the night, watching the ember of his cigarette glow and fade with every inhale?
With that thought, I suck in another lungful of smoke, along with any smoke that breathes from the ash. I no longer feel the burn in my lungs, no longer smell the acid. I just watch the ember fade from the inhale and compare it to my life. Just burning and waiting until there is no other option but than to fade out.
To end in smoke.
I flick the cigarette away from me. A dog barks. A car drives past. The wind is trying to speak to me again. I pace the front porch and I try to push down the ache in my entire being. Not knowing where she may be is killing me. With every breath of air I take of mystery, I die inside a little more.
I find myself wishing I spent our last moments just holding her. I wish I would have enjoyed the tickle of her hair on my nose as her face pressed against my chest. I wish I would have squeezed her closer to me as she shivered in the winter air. I wish I would have known it was the end.
The worst part is knowing that defining moment. The moment where everything changed and I just sat by thinking nothing of it. 'She'll be back,' I thought. 'This is nothing.'
But I was something.
It was everything.
It was the night that changed it all.
More to come very soon.