What's the price for a year? What's the cost of time that runs through your fingers like strands of silk, which accumulates on the floor in an ivory colored pile? Twelve years, how will you pay for them, and with what? Do you have what it takes to pay for the lost time?
And when you don't have money, or other material methods, you pay for the time, from inside. Your face becomes pale, and hollow. Your eyes are sunken and hunted and they don't have that deep, temperamental shade of gray they used to have. They become a mirror. Your hair becomes sparse, you're thinner, skeletal. You're hungrier. Eating a lot. Twelve years with little food take their price. And I can't find you in there. How much did you end up paying for the lost time? Where are you, deep inside, and where have you gone? Why can't I find you, get you out, save you?
I'm trying to look at you and see the boy I loved, Instead of the man who's too thin, too pale, hunted. Instead of the stranger whose sitting opposite me, gorging food in an unbelievable speed. I'm trying to see you, and I can't. Your lips clench in effort when you're trying to use fine motor skills. You don't know how to hold your fork, so you're using your hands to eat. And I wonder, (in the logic that characterizes me, as you'd say twelve years ago,) if everything's wrong with you. What atrophied in your head? What have they done to you?
I want to tell you words but I can't, because there aren't any. We had to pay with them, as well. And we're sitting here, so close but so far and something is crushing inside me and I can't take it anymore. I want to reach out, so my fingertips would brush the back of your hand. I almost forgot how your skin feels. I had to pay with memories. I know that you'll flinch in I touch you. You can't have others touching you and I don't know (don't want to know,) why.
Pictures are running in my head, and they are old and almost completely blurry and everything is bad. Bad, bad. So bad. And you're sitting here, you're here, and so am I. But there's a river of inhaling and exhaling between us, and it floats far away, taking pieces of who we are and what we used to be with it. You're getting up now and I'm watching you with dampness in my eyes. Your chair is forcefully toppled over and you're trying to straighten it, but you're getting into trouble doing it. A thick knot of regret is bounded in my stomach. You're saying words but my mind can't digest them. I understand you're going to sleep, and I nod.
Now I'm sitting next to your (my) bed, watching you sleep. You look so innocent. The night is buying the wrinkles on your face with tranquility. Your rib-cage is poking your skin while you breathe. I feel like crying. Your hair is damp from your shower, and the moon is weaving silver into it. I can't close my eyes and go back to sleep. In a few hours you'll get up and leave me, and I'll watch you disappear. I'll succeed in holding on, because I have for so long, but the bill isn't closed yet. We aren't done paying for all these years, not you, nor am I. And when you'll leave, the count will renew. Slowly, so slowly, she'll buy you and me completely, until there's nothing left.