The room smelt different, it was foreign and yet it was hers. She closed the door behind her and leant against it. Her hands were cold, but then, they were always cold. She inhaled deeply. She let the air in, and it moved and spread through her like a drop of ink on paper that grows bigger and spreads out in tiny tendrils. She tried to calm her heavy breathing. Slowly, but surely, the tension was leaving her. It was like a heavy cloak had wrapped itself around her, wrapping her in its warmth, one that she couldn’t lift off. The tight feeling around her heart, the clenched stomach, the lump in her throat- she wanted to shake it all off and she did just that. Like a dog that emerges out of water and shakes the droplets off, she shook herself.
The window was open and there was a breeze that lifted the curtains ever so lightly. Those yellow curtains with the white flowers. That had been a good day. Shopping in the market. Lots of laughter, a broken slipper and the resulting hobbling around. She moved closer to the window and let the breeze touch her face. It was cool . Like the glass on the side table near her bed. The other one lay fallen on the table. A short, thin rivulet of red wine had trickled down the side of the table, but it had already dried. She hadn’t noticed that last night. She picked the wine glass up by the stem,twirled it slowly and set it down straight. She traced her finger along the little river of red, sat down on the bed and closed her eyes. Her resolve was crumbling. She could feel it dying to break out, a huge mass of pain, for so long having been rolled into a tight ball, perched on a precipice, ready to fall. She lifted her face and then lowered her eyes to the ground in a final, defeated gesture. She fell backward and hit the bed but she could feel herself falling deeper and deeper, into a dark crevasse. Her tears crept out slowly, they stole their way out, taking with them her last shreds of fraying self control. She flailed her arms out wildly, reaching out for something to hold onto, to give her support, but her fists only managed to clench the rumpled sheets. She grasped them tightly and inhaled the scent still lingering on the sheets, of him, of their sweat that mingled and coalesced when they could feel nothing but pain and pleasure at the same instant in time.
She smiled, then, through her tears. A smile that made the falling stop. She was floating now. His laughter and words were the clouds underneath her, they buoyed her up. His teasing, his kisses, his embraces, his voice. His crooked half-grin. Stop! A voice inside her cried. Stop it! The desperation grew louder and louder, like the roar of the sea that engulfs a tiny boat caught in a storm. He’s not coming back, the voice screamed. She sobbed. She screamed. Called out to him. Her scream could wake the dead, he used to tell her. Could it not wake him, then? Wake up. Wake up. Come back.For me! The unspoken words lay formed on her lips. Never to leave. Never to be heard by him.
The Blackbird Chirps 