He sees me. He sees me when I wake up each morning and that pained look sweeps across my face when I realize it wasnt a dream. He sees me when I stand at the refrigerator, staring blankly at its contents when my eye catches the string cheese that he loved and I crumple into a puddle on the floor and cant get up. He sees my crumpled body on the floor a lot. He sees me as Im shaking and picking myself up. He sees me as I restlessly sleep, my eyes twitching and my arms flailing as I dream about him. He sees me standing in the bathroom as my clothes fall off my lifeless body and I stand looking at my naked self, my clavicle protruding out more each day. He sees me as I examine the skin across my belly, sagging and marked with years of stretching. My hand runs across that place where he grew; the place where his life began. He sees me pinch the rolls of skin, as the years come flooding back. Tears fall down my face as I remember the times I cursed that body for what it had become. He sees me talking to myself in the mirror, now cursing myself for ever feeling ashamed of those marks, those same marks that now stand as evidence that he was here. He sees me as I turn the water on and feel the warmth of the water flow down my body, and he sees the panic swell in my face as I remember that day. The shower, the times he tried to climb in with me, the times I shewed him away, and how he was outside dying as I shaved my legs. He sees me fall to the shower floor and cry and scream and curse God. He sees my spine along my back as my body is curled up like a ball. I am shaking and crying in heaves so great that I vomit. Good thing Im in a shower anyway. He sees me standing at his bedroom door, my hand pressed against it as Im tempted to open it and look inside. For a moment I believe that if I open it, I will see him sleeping in his bed. My heart begins to race with the realization that I will never see him sleeping in that bed again. The clothes in his drawers will never be worn by him again. He sees me turn the doorknob ever so slowly and open in a crack, then quickly close it and turn and walk away. He sees me every time I lay in bed and think of him lying next to me, and how I picture him in my head, and how it becomes too much so I start screaming for him. He sees me sitting at the picnic table in the backyard, the same table I built for our family to make happy memories around as he ate our summer dinners. I sit there and look at his swing set, the one he got for his last birthday. And now he hears me. He hears me ask him why he did it; why he disobeyed me and broke my heart. Why he left me. Why he didnt just watch the movie with his brothers and sister like I told him too. I ask him why he was so damn smart, so damn big for this world. I am shouting at him, and he hears me. And he sees the tears pouring from my eyes as I yell at him, asking him how Im supposed to go on living with out my little friend, my shadow, my baby. He sees me. And he sees that half of me died with him, and the half of me that remains is that half that is relearning how to breathe in and out and walk with one foot in front of the other.
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 23:35:15 +0000