Please, Forgive Me

TW: Grief/Loss of a loved one.

“I’m so sorry… I love you with all that I am, and I really didn’t mean what I said to you. Don’t go,” I plead with wholehearted regret. I desperately yearn for the words to resonate within your mind before you get the chance to slam the front door closed without a moment’s glance in my direction. By some miracle, of which I know I am entirely undeserving, you hesitate in the doorframe. 

My heartbeat races as you peer up at me with bloodshot eyes, tears cascading down your beautiful, solemn face. Gently flowing pools drip from your cloudy blue-gray eyes and caress your cherry painted cheeks. Your lips violently tremble as you try in vain to express the hurt I’ve so carelessly thrust upon you. I watch, completely helpless and tormented by my own shameful guilt, as you desperately claw at your slender throat. You silently beg the words to escape the crevices of your shattered mind, but suffocating sobs are all your shallow breathing has to offer. Not a word needs to pass your quivering mouth for me to hear the thoughts threatening to tear you apart. 

I know precisely what unforgiving misconceptions run rampant behind your anguish filled eyes. I know because I am the one who so recklessly placed them there, and now I have the sickening displeasure of witnessing them shatter you into a million tiny pieces. 

The only consolation cast upon me by whatever forces of the universe have disregarded my undeserving nature is the fact that you still stand in the doorway. Your car keys continue to dangle from your fragile, trembling fingers, but you indicate no other signs of preparing to walk out the door and leave me behind to drown in my own regrets. Your hesitation to flee may not seem like much of a comfort, but it is everything I could ever need. 

Before me stands the opportunity to cross the ominous distance between us and wrap my arms around your delicate frame. I have been given the chance to place your soft face in the palm of my hand and gently caress your dampened skin, to plead for forgiveness that I know I don’t deserve, and to show you in every conceivable way that I love you with all that I am and all that I will ever be. 

Except the forces of the universe never gave me that chance. Instead, after allowing callous words to trespass beyond my lips over some perceived slight I can no longer recall, I fell silent in seething aggravation. I refused to utter a single word as you grabbed your keys off the kitchen counter with trembling figures. An apology danced across my tongue, but my pride refused to let the sounds escape me. All I could bring myself to do was watch as you walked out the front door without a passing glance in my direction. 

I would give anything to go back to a time before it all came crashing down in front of me. If only I could return to the time when we were happy, when we laughed loudly and endlessly as if the world around us had stopped and all our worries faded away. I still remember it all. Underneath the gleaming night sky, from the time flowers blossomed among the trees until snow blanketed the hardened ground, I would wrap my arms around your body to provide you with all of the warmth and safety I had to offer. You would lay your head in my lap, my fingers trailing gently across your soft skin. Sometimes, I could feel the tears streaming down your cheeks. I dried each tiny raindrop and told you that you were loved, all the while cursing my own inability to take away every fragment of your endless pain. 

For so long we closed ourselves off from the rest of the world, only grappling with the unquenchable desire to grow ever closer. Throughout every bitter story of our entangled lives, each ounce of our echoing sadness, and all of the burdens we begrudgingly carried with us, we held strong so long as we were together. 

Masked by the encompassing darkness, you caressed every inch of me. Two halves were irrevocably made whole. When one of us fell apart, the other was always there to pick up the shattered pieces and stitch them back together. Letters lay sprawled across my cluttered desk, all written in your handwriting, each note an expression of love meant for me to read over and over again. 

I remember the endless stream of stolen kisses passed between us in the trembling darkness, us dancing underneath the splintered glow of the moonlight, and the gentle pecks of our lips as we laid in the damp grass while our heartbeats flickered. I remember how truly happy we were, closer to each other than anyone else in the world, before it all tragically fell apart. 

And now here I exist with the agonizing knowledge that we will never experience any of it ever again. Never will I be able to hear the soft sound of your musical laughter or your off-key singing in the shower when you think nobody’s around to listen. Never again will we dance in the rain under the dim light of the stars on a cloudy night. No more will I get to caress your delicate face in my hands or feel my arm go numb from you falling asleep against it. No longer will I get to come home to someone who loves me with every fiber of their being regardless of my many faults. Never again will you run your gentle fingers through my hair. Never will I get to see your beautiful face light up at the sight of seemingly insignificant details that make you happy. 

We will never get to finish watching our favorite show together, go to that new restaurant you desperately wanted to try, or the other million and one things we had planned. No longer do we have the chance to experience life and grow old together and it’s all my fault for letting my apologies dance unspoken behind my lips. You will never know how much I wish I could take it all back.

I could scream apologies into the endless void that stands before me until my throat is hoarse and the words no longer make sense. I could scribble them over and over again until I’ve filled dozens of notebooks and my fingers bleed. I could carve them into the face of every tree, every stone, and every dirt path I come across. I could etch them into the earth in every way humanly conceivable, and it will never be enough. You will never hear the words. You will never know them. You will never be provided with the solace I could have offered. I’m sorry. I should have told you before you slammed the door closed, but I am so sorry. 

Having known you and loved you with everything I am, within me exists the sorrowful knowledge that even the simplest of apologies would have been enough to bring you back to me. The only pitiful excuse I have to offer is that my pride would not allow those words to cross between us, but I wish you had somehow known they were there all along. I wish you had seen the regret forming in my eyes. I wish you had known the disgust I felt upon hearing my own voice utter such cruel grievances against someone I had only ever cherished and loved. 

I wish I could have saved you. Words cannot properly express how empty I feel without you here. You were everything I ever wanted and yet I sat idly by while all that we had flashed before my eyes. Without you, I am a broken half incapable of becoming whole. I am shattered fragments of something once beautiful blowing away in the wind. I am lost, forgotten, and nothing all at once. 

Your very existence was a prevailing light in the relentless darkness of the universe. Your presence was a treasure to all who were blessed enough to know you. In an instant, the world lost a precious gift who had so much to offer while I lost my other half and every piece of myself that truly mattered. If only for you to leave me behind in the end, I still wish I could have saved you.