Hurt

The hurt clings to me, hanging precariously onto every fiber, to each cell of skin and thread of clothing pulling me down and intruding on my every thought. It’s not hurt for you oddly enough. I hurt for the ones who move on without you, trudging through the days and the emptiness that saturates the home you shared. For some reason when I think of you it’s with a calm sense of freedom.  I picture a grey openness, empty space and crisp air, like a photograph taken on a cold winter day, just above the tree line with nothing but sky filling the frame. An ethereal world, as if created by the brushes of Arthur Bowen Davies.

Writing the words now though I can see you looking at me; a smirk on that clown face of yours, one eye raised and making fun of the emptiness in my head. Your garnet colored sweater matching my level of embarrassment. This new moment created from many real memories and a look I’d seen you show off many times.

Each meeting between us, every conversation, agreement and difference has become part of me, a piece of a mental collage I keep tucked away in a not so isolated corner of my brain. I access it daily, at least for now. I’m unable to comprehend the breadth of the collage you encompass in the minds of those who were closer to you. I wonder how long they will remain sharp and clear these memories, these cinematic snippets of time we shared. How long before your face paint fades.

You talked about it nonchalantly, so often of leaving this place. That was just talk though, not a plan laid out to equip those who knew you. Maybe it would be different had I been ready, had we been warned, prepared for the suddenness of it all. But everything was right and the way it had always been, and then it just wasn’t. The sameness of our every day disrupted and the monotony can no longer be counted on for comfort.

The hurt clings to me.