write myself, save myself

this has been a rough few weeks, and it's looking like i've gotta try to write myself out of this hole. so here's a very short story i've been working on. i've been working on. (i decided to try to write some more fiction/creative nonfiction since that last story.) let's hope it helps improve my mood. :)

i hold him close to me. i like the feeling of his body hovering over my own, muscles hardened years ago veiled behind soft new cushions of flesh. i like the solid thick of him. his breath on my neck, warm and damp--i feel it, wait for it cradled between the brush of eyelashes on the little spot of skin behind my ears and the drift of his scent.

i close my eyes and try to concentrate. these days i can't seem to chase away the dread. it's like i'm just waiting for us to crack down the middle. to unravel, quietly, irreparably. to shatter. i just hope the shards form a lovely pattern when they tumble down.

i feel it most when we're alone at night. cloistered in my small room, he paces my cluttered floor, cursing the indignities of the hours before, wishing away the daylight lurking behind the dark. his face is knit with worry, and when he turns to me i see the clouds in his eyes. (i used to see stars.) please, i say, stop moving. come here. i soothe him, draw his head into my lap. nothing now but breathing and silence. i stroke his hair and try to tell him something true. but all i can manage are words i've heard somewhere else. so i say them--reheat lines i stole from other people's mouths and feed them to him, spoon full of sugar and something that looks like love.

maybe he will find out the truth. maybe he won't. maybe i'll lie so good that my words will turn into life, and everything will be pretty and simple like it used to be. maybe i'll just leave. all i know is that i would give anything--any goddamn thing--to feel something, anything, again.

what do you say at a time like this?

it's hard to believe that a person can cease to exist but the world doesn't pause. but why should it? what will that give you? those moments will not give you the time to conjure up words powerful enough to erase his parents' pain. you will never have enough hours to explain to his friends how sorry--really, truly sorry--you are that they will never see him again. there is simply not enough time in the world to transform their burial into the wedding it was supposed to be.

maybe it's better not to have the time because, honestly, maybe it's better to pretend nothing happened. maybe our busyness, our hurry, our unthinking rush is our best homage to the dead: an admission that we know we are too small to ever create something that could fill the void they left. our reluctance to speak is a confession of fear, and oddly a confession of faith--faith that, in this world of constant chatter and bullshit statements, our silence can hold all the love we have.