dissolution of time and self, and a fictional blurb on grief
(I'm taking a fiction writing workshop, so these blurbs might appear now and then)
You/she/I/we/he/they/us/all of us sat alone.
She stifled a sob, and at once collected herself up from her creaking rocking chair, forcibly pushing the sadness down, she tensed her hands into fists and then exhaled.
She migrated to the kitchen to make a cup of tea, and proceeded to stand weary over the kettle on the hob, waiting, waiting, grueling it was- passing time while waiting for the time to pass. Finally, the kettled wailed a screaming whistle- which you let continue and continue and continue, until finally you joined it in a cry. How horribly right to let air be pushed to rattle your lungs, gritting up your vocal cords, seizing your thoughts. She stopped only because it was too painful to intake more air into her lungs in the way she would’ve wanted to, in order to scream again. You removed the kettle and slumped onto the cold wood floor in resignation.
How does one move through time, when it constantly slaps you across the face, punches her in the gut, and leaves tears in my heart? Grief chases her mercilessly, creating an endless, winding loop that gets to the point of strangulation on this day. Wretched earth. Wretched for taking my love away. Wretched for leaving you impossibly and hopelessly alone. This black hole of a day greedily consumes everything, leaving only sensations of loss to remind her that she is still here, still alive, regrettably so. The stinging grief on the surface of my skin, the hollowness caverning directly under, and bones of lead. Heavy. So fucking heavy.
Some days it is less like this and more like the total annihilation of numbness. The kind where your body disintegrates into the couch you’ve sunken your heavy bones into for what feels like lifetimes, and she forgets to eat. She pisses, but its not a good color because you also forgot to drink water. I don’t remember not drinking water, and I don’t remember doing it either. It’s a nothing happened day, because time wound up on itself and got tangled like that stupid yo-yo you had as a kid.
Some days it is less like vacantness and more like red hot, itchy, pain-staking fury. The kind where, for the sake of the bones in my hand, she should’ve punched a pillow instead of the wall.
Some days she goes to her neighbors rickety old house and sits on the porch with her. Her, being a crinkly, papery, keeled over, old woman/man?, who’s spine holds the same curve as his cane, and who walks around, forced to always be looking at her feet. They sit. They smoke cigarettes. Sometimes we have a diet coke. We don’t talk, mostly because his hearing is absolute shit, and he refuses to wear hearing aids. She is lonely too. She is a widow too. She lost her reason for living too.
I don’t actually know this last part. I made it up, for sake of comfort. Just seems easier to have a silent kinship rather than know the facts and accidentally dissolve everything that made sense about sitting, smoking and sipping. I can’t lose this too.
One day you walk out your door and find yourself on your porch. I light a cigarette, and strain to look up.
She left her cane on your porch. I bring it inside for you.