The day is short and the nights are long. The cold bites in your fur. It is the tundra, the cold. Air that chills your lungs and burns your throat. You love it, you live for it.
The mud that squelches beneath your paws, sinks into your toes and stays. A craving for the home. The human world wizzes by never making sense, for you are made for the cold wilderness. The mud splashes your fur. You are home and free.
Hunger and survival are your gods, here you are meant to take and give to this world.
I once asked my father, hoping for some insight and advice. 'What do you do when someone dies?'.
The answer is nothing. You do nothing.
Its true. When someone dies what can you do? sit and wait, stand in your grief and die as well?
Really it boils down to you have to move on. Whether you want to or not, there is no option of stopping. You have to keep going.
Last month, June 28th, my partners father died. I think now about this advice. It feels like the world is strange and new. Thinking that someone who I knew and saw very often is now absent from the life I inhabit.
Of course the road to his death was very long and full of pain for everyone. Full of hope and waiting, good news only to be met with the option of death only.
He died before he made it to the hospital. His soul and life gone, just a corpse strung along to play the part. Once he woke up it became apparent. He was gone.
I think this was one of the few times I had seen my partner cry, and one of the few times I had cried so much I couldn't move. Its pain and grief. The mourning on my end must be over. I pray that whatever his last moments where, had only been good ones. That his soul is carried far into the other side and enjoys whatever he wills.
My fathers insight runs true. At some point someone must step in and finish the grief off. Currently that person is me. I grieve, but I must play the role of support and caregiver. I can be sad, but I must be done crying, so that others can have support so they may shed tears for him.
As I write this, worst always has happened. I wish to some degree, it had not been drawn out so long. I wish that they do not see him the way he is now. Playing being alive. A corpse sitting and breathing.
It is the death I do no wish people to see. The kind in which that they are no longer there. Eyes open but empty. They do not respond.
One day I will have that death too, I see it. I've seen it. I wish no one will see these deaths. No one who wishes to remember them as alive.
Its the reason people hide children away from death.
I have requested that they shouldn't see him as he is now. However, for the mother and the son, it was too late. She saw him first when he woke. The worst time to be there. She will need the most support. I offer all I can for them.
That is one of the roles of being me. I will be the one who collects tears, and mends things when needed. I will be a courier for them, and will ensure they do not stop and die as well. I cannot let that happen.
I think that is one of the hardest parts of death. That lack of community, those who will help to ensure you are fed, clothed, warm and cleaned. Someone to ensure that you in your grief are not in turn dying.
Time, it ticks by.
Click
Click
Every hour, passing slowly. Passing fast when I don’t look. Now days it’s all I have to look at. The clock on the wall. It was a gift from a dear friend from not that long ago. I’ve kept it. I could bear to get myself to throw it away.
Click
Click
At least I’ll always be able to keep track of the time. Only a minute behind. Hands slowly following each other in a series of never ending circles. Day in, day out. Never really going anywhere. Stuck in place, but always still moving.
Sometimes, late at night, when darkness falls and the city goes to sleep.
Click
I think.
Click
About what I plan to do with my life, but the answer is always. “I don’t know” I have never known. It strikes me now, that I still don’t. Even as my life nears an end. I wasted it. 20 years on earth and I have nothing to my name.
click
click
And here the clicking comes back again.
Its a count down. At least to me it is. Tomorrow my 24 hours will be up.
Authors Note: I originally wrote this during my first relationship. These are feelings I did not share to my partner at the time. Being aromantic this peom means a lot to me and I continue to constantly rewrite this one, and copy it on new note books.
I thought I never understood the concept of love.
A language I could never speak
a test i cannot read, even though I had studied my materials.
I thought I would never be able to love someone ever.
broken, not meant for the society I was raised and studied for.
When I am with you; just being you.
I feel like I do understand love and how to love.
it something that comes with breathing to you.
second nature.
I do not feel this breathe, this nature.
i crave to do so. crave to feel the way you can feel.
i understand i love,
and so i think i love you
