There's a flash of lightning that illuminates the room, and Jo turns on her side and checks what time it is. It's just past five a.m. now, and though she could stay a couple of hours more in bed, she knows she won't be able to get any sleep. Pretty soon, she knows, she'll have to look at something that will break her heart for the 487th time, so she tries her level best to distract herself, to delay that moment for a little while longer. Jo goes to the kitchen, and puts on the kettle. She sits on the chair, her feet on the cold floor. She never was one for slippers, and she doesn't like to sleep with her socks on. She know that he's left by now, he always leaves super early in the morning, and that makes her heart ache. It will hurt more soon, she knows. There's a bubbling sound coming from the kettle that tells her it's time for her to make her tea. No sugar, just a dollop of honey, and she takes the cup with her and stands by the window while she watches the rain fall incessantly outside. It's been raining for days now, and these are days she's always loved, the rainy days where she used to go and play outside when she was a kid, the same rainy days she used to go for walks, and now the pitter-patter echoes the sadness that lingers in this house. She heaves a sigh, a miserable sound she's heard herself exhale oh so many times before. It's time, it's time to go to the living room.
When she gets there, and though she doesn't want to look at it, not really, it's the first thing her eyes do. It's the saddest thing she's ever seen - the indent on the couch from where he sleeps. Jo tries hard not to cry, and sits down on the couch where Jake has been sleeping for a long time now. The rain seems to be falling harder, now, and the low growl of thunder can be heard in the distance. 'There's a storm outside', she sings to herself, 'and the gap between crack and thunder, crack and thunder, is closing in, is closing in.' Lightning streaks across the still dark sky, and she lets the tears flow free. Life has a way of making things happen in a fucked way, she muses, as she lays down on the couch. She can still smell him. She's sure she can still feel the warmth of him. If she could, she'd hold him, but when she can... she doesn't. There's too much hurt between now, there's been too much hurt between for a long while. For far too long. The problem is that she doesn't even know what really started it - it's not like they had a history of fighting or anything like that, they got along pretty well. But one day they just stopped talking to each other. She doesn't get it, they used to talk all the time, about anything and everything, and now they barely say 'hello' to each other. How the fuck did this metamorphosis happen? The distance between them grew and grew, and one night he got out of bed and slept on the couch. And he never came back.
Jo, in her pride, never asked him to. At first, she pretended it was all ok, or that he was sleeping on the couch because he couldn't get any sleep lying next to her, she told herself any number of lies. It was just for a few days, she said to herself, but the days passed and turn into weeks. And now it's going on for over a year. She's certain that he cries himself to sleep every night, and though the biggest part of her wants to come and soothe him and take him by the hand to their bed, some form of paralysis keeps her from reaching out. Some time after he started sleeping on the couch, Jake had to start working an earlier shift, which meant that most nights he was asleep fairly early, sometimes even before she got home. He'd always leave before she was up, and he'd stopped kissing her goodbye just before he left. She knows why. She knows what she said. She can't blame him, and she knows she broke his heart too. There's only one day in their week where they can be together, but they've both since opted not to. It's not a decision they reached out of common accord, and somehow she doubts it was even a decision made on their own. It just sort of happened. Like everything else, it sort of happened, and they went along. It's easier that way, right? Just wait patiently for the end to come. How then, does she tell him that she doesn't want the end to come? That she wants everything to go back to how it was. How? How, when every single word inside her, the untold googolplexes of them, refuse to come out, and condemn them to an unyielding silence?
No comments:
Post a Comment