It starts as a spark. A vestige of an unexpressed emotion. Then it becomes as infectious as an idea, spreading its branches far and wide, gripping those folds ever so tightly. For a moment, I wish she would give me repose. As she thunders on blinding the caws and the hoots, blurring the sweet and the sour, I wish for a moment that all was black. Dark, silent, empty.
Empty; that lack of fullness, definition, in short, the absence of everything. Empty means the overwhelming multitude of emotions associated with and the realization of loss. The perfection of that absence, that gaping hole that seems to grow wider and wider engulfing the little that was left after the impact, never fails to awe me. There are still tell-tale singes and fissures. They construct a boundary, something that defines the emptiness by. Open spaces can never be empty, it is said. But to me, emptiness is the curve of her back, that lock of her hair, the fragrance of lavender, her smile. Everything else is empty, black.
I can still hear her laughter, see her smile, that lock of her hair dancing near her ear, her step falter, her smile transform to surprise, shock, horror. There she dangled by the edge of that cliff, her eyes pleading for help. We all stood and watched. Later, I termed my inaction helplessness and slept peacefully, unperturbed by the ghosts that hovered in my chamber. There were some who watched her fall, unable to laugh and rejoice, bound by propriety; oh, how their heart ached from suppressing all that! She could reduce everyone else in the vicinity to dumb objects when she came in. Such was her aura. The air of mystery, an eternal sadness that seemed to emanate from her, perpetually. There was no way another could replicate them all. Like evil step-mothers they comforted themselves; they were the fairest on earth once again.
Nobody looked at her as she fell, save myself. That look on her eyes as she descended into the murky depths of oblivion. She did not accuse me. Those two black onyxes seemed to ask “Why aren’t you here, holding on to my hands, unwilling to let go? Was I wrong?” The fault in her was not that she fell, it was not that she did not heed to all those words of caution, her fault was her trust in me. She trusted me with her life which I saw wither away in front of my eyes. She became a symbol, something mothers would point to and say, “Do not be so”. For me she is an enigma. She was my failure, the one long yard I fell short of.
There isn’t a way to make amends. Sugar-coated or otherwise, pills do have constraints. Perhaps the gnawing pain might cease, but I doubt if the dent can ever be smoothed out and made perfect again. More than a dent, I think something has chipped off. I am sure that it is her. As I climb down into the murky emptiness where I believe she rests, all I have is a tiny, flickering light of hope. I hope that it will fall on that tear drop whose fall I witnessed from my safe perch. Maybe she will ‘shine on and never burn’ in the same hope. I will find her. I must.
