I wrote this prose/poem short story some time ago, a meditation on grief and the intertwining of the actions of the every day with thoughts and memories and the spiralling of emotions that occurs when dealing with losing someone you love. I thought I’d share it here.
Artwork: Mural by @nean_kingdom, France
When words are not enough
it wasn’t enough to say you’re gone
Words that fell through air, at first feather light, then sucked of all resistance to earth, a weight to spear flesh.
those very words, spoken on the phone by a stranger
His eyes drifted to the weave of muslin, muffling sight through a window. He was searching for the horizon, always. And the tree so familiar. They’d chosen the house for the tree, she’d joked. And the rise of the hills beyond the boundary fence, sinking their home into a valley.
she’s gone
From the moment he entered the house where they’d lived, he could hear it.
Nothing.
passed away (without him there to hold onto her to the very last)
The silence of a breath held.
as if to avoid, to skirt that other word
Rooms, hollow and empty, filled solid with things.
dead
And the smell. Dank from the heavy rains, soaking soil, its mineral taint seeping through the wood and carpet, the chill of plaster and stone. The scent of a home too long locked up. He hadn’t wanted to come back here. Not without her. Not after an accident he could never explain as such. It felt like a collision of worlds ending, not the crash of vehicles on an ordinary, yet stormy night.
how that one word ends…
The dust was hanging in the air, catching in his throat as he breathed.
everything
They’d chosen none of the furniture. Some came with the house, other pieces he’d inherited.
they said you felt nothing, death instant
He walked, light-headed at how easily she’d slipped from being in this life to not.
nothing
no-thing…what could that even mean? how could they know?
And then he stopped, arrested by light shafting through a pane of glass. There was a fine tracery, a web of lines, faintly etched on its surface that caught and cracked the light and set his mind wandering through to the place beyond it, threaded and shaped.
how to leave—let go
His hand fisted to hold the muslin to cocoon himself with it. A taut sheet of mesh like skin. An echo of being held. And then he ran, out through the back door into the evening air, the sky opening to him. Descending shades of blue so intense he wondered if he was dreaming. Wanted to run towards it and let it seep into him, so that he disappeared.
how to move away from here—you
As if words could somehow release her from his life.
how to say…
Standing still, shrouded in the coming twilight, the words were falling.
Heavy.
Too blunt to capture the passing of a life.
you felt nothing, and to me, you are everything
As if words ever could.
© Angela Jooste