Why are you up so late?

I feel your presence near.
Not as smooth as honey
but fresher than dew.
I feel around the dark hoping to catch your hand
but all I touch is my pillow and my cold sheets.

My lungs lack rest and so does my heart.
Too restless, as the corseted strings suffocate.
This is what it feels when you die a premature death.
What it feels like when your story ends on the 10th page.
To be put back on the shelf, never to be remembered again.
It is an ache that you cannot refuse.

So I take a sip or two of the devil’s brew.
Okay…More than just a sip…
And sit at the balustrade,
overdosed on thoughts.
Our secrets and stories escape my tongue.
Your name slowly slipping from my lips;
so easily escaping.
I begin shouting, as if to the whole world.
‘Maybe he’ll hear me if I shout just a bit louder,’ I hoped.
‘Maybe he’ll come back…’ I sighed.
Seams tearing,
I finally fall apart.

Louder and more spontaneously I go on.
A haphazard display of the fabulously dramatic,
painful,
and lonely.
Aching and breathless lungs begin to protest.
And so I finally call it quits,
looking up and observing
the canopy of luminous stars materialised in
the vast expanse of a jet-black sky,
that suddenly transformed into a salmon purple sky.

I walk back into the room,
though empty is expanding.
Still cockeyed,
I began staring at a bleak wall.
Questioning its geometric shape
that implemented the false perception of perfection.
I could almost hear his voice
throwing around the word ‘love’
like it was an apology.
I could almost hear it echoing off the walls.
But he was gone
and was certainly never going to come back.
I am forever left to wonder,
if happiness was really meant for certain people.
…Certain people who were not me…

 

Maria Angela Maina