He's Gone

It was dark. I only knew it was him because the loose manner in which he walked. I knew that walk by heart. It had taken me by surprise; seeing him meandering down the walk with a hand dropped at his side, beer can in hand. His choice of drink far from surprised me. His head was fully sunk, his eyes glued to the asphalt. I wondered where he was going and if he’d turn back. I debated whether run out the door and catch up to him, to approach him and search for words to say, but there was no point. He was far down the street and his figure was becoming more vague each second that passed. He was long gone and not turning back.

Each time he left felt just like the first. The pang in my stomach, trying to hold back the tears I knew had all run out after the first time he walked away, and the second, and the third. But my face still became hot with the sting of the pain. It overtook my body like a train at full speed crashing into my core and snapping my ribs to pieces. I watched until his shape disappeared into the night, heading towards somewhere or someone more important than I. I still stared at the place in the road where I’d last been able to make him out, hopelessly wishing the outline of his perfect body might appear again.


The vibration of my phone awoke me from my daze, but I knew I’d be let down by the name on the screen. Things had changed since the day he walked away. My ambivalence let me ignore it. I climbed back in bed and swaddled the covers around my cold body. I clutched my knees to my chest in efforts to calm my stomach, but nothing worked anymore. The discomfort seemed endless. All the medicine in the world couldn’t cure this pain, for it was deeply rooted in the strings of my heart piercing me with every beat.


I glanced at the clock resting on the table beside me, the white glow shined painfully in contrast to the blackness of my room. It read 1:28, one of the darkest hours of the night. It was the darkness that protected me. I felt safe, and refreshingly invisible. I dreaded sunrise and didn’t want to sleep for I knew what I’d dream about. I knew I’d wake up in a cold sweat; my bed disarray and my mouth dry with fear. A feeling I knew all too well. I lay awake discomforted by the crack in my door leading to the darkness of another room. When I was young I used to fear that someone might walk through that door and take me away to an unknown place I could not escape. Now I was fearless. I had suffered pain that no one could top; not a soul that could walk through that door could surpass it, and that notion numbed my fear. My discomfort was no longer fear, but lack of any emotion at all. I didn’t know what kind of person is ambivalent towards the thought of being snatched up in the depths of night. I guessed someone like me. I pondered the sadness of this truth, and wished as I did each night that the pain would go away just for a mere moment; that an angel would come along and lift the weight from my heart to allow me to feel free, to just breathe softly and painlessly for the first time in what seemed like eternity.