I wonder if she'll ever know how much I loved her...? Loved, see how I have to put it in the past tense just to say it. I know it's not true, I’m only trying to fool myself, but do you? Would you even care if you knew?
It still hurts, less now but every time you visit me, I awake with the pain of loosing you all over again. The pain is sharp, takes my breath away as suddenly as if I had the wind knocked out of me. They say that time heals all but for me, it only causes you to fade even further from my mind, the only place that you were ever truly mine. Eyes close tight trying to hold on to the retreating images of you in my minds eye, if only to spend another moment in your presence gazing into your sparkling eyes. The sound of your laugh fades into the recesses of the darkness of my mind. Eyes tarry in the darkness in one final, futile attempt to hold you. It’s too late, you’re gone again, having returned to whence you came.
Alone again, the early illumination of dawn is the only light that pierces my darkness, I’m left with haunting images of what must have been a dream. In the silence I wonder if it was all a reverie, that I created you to fill the other half of this broken heart? If it wasn’t for the agony in my chest reminding me of reality, the thought might make more sense because if I could conjure my other half, it would be you.
The tears begin to roll down my wrinkled face, I roll over to the cold side of the bed fleeing from the images that moments ago I had been determined to never let go. Focus on the pain, I hear myself whisper into the dawn. Aside from the ghosts of a lifetime of failing to find her equal, it’s the only thing that remains that is real. Another tear rolls slowly down my weathered cheek, finally dropping off the end of my nose. The memories begin to fade with the growing light of the dawn. Sleep has forsaken me, at least for now but following every day another night inevitably will come and the battle will be rejoined anew. Today, like every day since, the question burns in my mind. I wonder if she’ll ever know how much I love her...?
By Shane McKown
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