and now that you're gone to someplace else, i can't save you

so i'm giving every part of you away

How does it feel?

The rain is pouring outside, raindrops pelting down towards the road and the houses with viciousness. The air is damp and hot from the asphalt cooling off after a long summer day. The shades are drawn to keep the light out, but they can't stop the sound of wind and rain from filling the silence indoors.

The house is clean and tidy, objects neatly set in their place, silent and unmoving. She hovers among them, almost immaterial in her presence, brushing a finger absent-mindedly on their tops, muttering short sentences to herself. Her hair is cut short and uneven, sticking flatly to her head in some places and bursting out at odd angles in others. Her skin is ghostly pale from having been deprived of proper light for a very long time, and her eyes are hidden under a tightly knotted bandana placed just over them, making it impossible for her to see. At first, she looks like a middle-aged woman playing a blindfolded hide and seek game in the house, but the assuredness with which she steps and moves among the furniture and about the room goes against such an idea. It looks as if she has been depriving herself of the ability to see for a very long time, learning in the meantime to do without it, like a blind person would, sharpening her senses continuously.

She moves away from the room and down a long corridor, leading to another part of the house. She goes into the kitchen and feels for the coffee machine on the counter, before taking the pot out and maneuvering it towards the sink, from where she picks up a clean cup. She pours a cup of coffee shakily over the sink, trying her best not to spill, then leaves the pot next to the sink on the counter, making a mental note not to forget about it later on. She goes and sits by the window, cup in her hand, and periodically takes small sips of coffee. Long ago, drinking it with no sugar would have been unbearable, and a concept she could never grasp. But as the years went by, to save time feeling about for a spoon and some sugar, she left her sweetening habit behind.

After a while, her legs get tired from standing and she moves towards a chair, sitting down gratefully, her coffee almost finished. The blindfold prevents her eyes from giving her face and expression, and she seems more like an unfinished statue than anything else, confined to this house as a sort of punishment for not having the courage to face the facts. A few minutes later, she stands up, and makes her way towards the corridor, turning right halfway through and stepping into the bedroom.

The room, compared to the others, is a mess. Clothes lay scattered on the floor in small heaps all around the double bed. The wardrobe doors are wide open, and she stops for a few minutes in front of those, facing the vacant shelves coated with a thick layer of dust. She then stretches out on the bed, letting out a heavy, tired sigh, spreading her arms out like wings and moving them upwards and downwards as if making a snow angel. She remembers the way this room looks from memory, but her memory doesn't differ in many aspects from what it looks like now. The same mess, the same emptiness of the two-person wardrobe, the same leftover feeling, the same forgotten sentiment. She turns on one side and feels the side of the bed that seems less used.

How does it feel?

It feels like you've been left behind at home when your parents left for the holiday. Everything is exactly as if they were there, or returning shortly. But they are not there, nor are they on their way back. I've divided my time between this room and the kitchen and the living room, I've wasted hours lying in this bed or circling the living room or watching out windows and worlds I'm blinded to. I'm consumed between this moment and the next, and the ones after that are forlorn and scattered. I keep the house as it was then, and I imagine it everyday how it was then, so no detail goes to waste. I remember the better days this house has seen, and I with it. I remember his shape on the bed, spooning with me, before the times when anyone or anything could enthusiast him more than I could. The nights spent arguing and the hushed apologies whispered in the dark afterwards, searching for the peace and quiet of before. The weekends out camping under starlight skies, with distant owl hoots as company. The snuggling in the sleeping bag to keep each other warm and safe, the stifled laughter in the stiffening quiet of the forest, the long nights spent next to bonfires telling stories and jokes and promising forevers. How does it feel, then, having to give up your lifetime's best memories, your encyclopedia of happiness once the strongest link in the chain that triggered all emotions and feelings suddenly decides to break free of you? It feels like waking up stranded, all on your own, somewhere remote and lonely where no one will ever help you find your way again. And you don't just feel emptiness, you see it all around you. And if you can't stop yourself from feeling, from remembering, you have to stop yourself from seeing. You have to keep your senses busy with something else. And if he's not here for me to look at, what else is worth the light of day in my eyes anymore? I gave up my eyesight two days after he left. There was nothing to look at, nothing that didn't remind me of him, nothing that didn't tie him to me, nothing that didn't hurt. So, how does it feel? How does it feel not to see anymore? How does it feel to only feel, and even so to feel what no one else should have to feel, ever? It doesn't matter what it feels like. He is not here and, somehow, neither am I. He cannot see, and neither can I. So if I can still feel so much, can he?
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