The Space You Used To Occupy

Unrelenting ticking dominates my otherwise quiet room—the damn pocket watch. The one from your damn grandpa. The one who cursed at you for being in love with another man. In love with me.

The sound continues.

Tick-tock. It won’t leave my awareness, and it summons your green eyes framed by golden curls in my mind. Your wicked smile. You were always scheming something extraordinary. I was thankful to be along for the ride.

Tick-tock.

I can’t handle the sound. It pulls me from my warm bed. Walking around the bed, I yank the damn thing from the surface of your nightstand.

I have to decide whether I’ll chuck it out the window or finally smash it to pieces.

My reflection stares back at me into the glass as I run my thumb over its surface. Unkempt brown hair and dark circles under my eyes that will deepen after another night’s missed sleep. I look like shit, and despite life and the world and most things being a joke to you, I know you would take one look at me, Clay, and transform into my nurse. Would you tuck me in? Run a hand through my hair? Straddle me and kiss me senseless?

But you’re not here. And it’s okay to look like shit because 3 am never calls for composure anyway.

And the university produces students who appear just as lousy. Only most aren’t contemplating busting the last piece of their heart. A reminder of what was and what will never be.

Shaking these thoughts away, I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I won’t be a university student much longer.

How long since ‘Matt’ and ‘Clay’ were called in tandem at our favorite cafe? How many months has it been since you whispered in my ear those funny little quips during movies at the local theatre? Clay was worth missing classes over, flunking grades. Our circle of friends rolled their eyes at our sequestered time together, our late nights locked in each other’s arms once the relationship was official.

Padding across the studio apartment I’ll call mine for one more month until I return home to my parents, I toss the watch in my only kitchen drawer stuffed with take-out menus, fortunes you couldn’t help but save, somehow believing the universe was guiding him through cheap, stale cookies. And photos I can’t bring myself to look at anymore.

Teardrops land on the glass surface of the watch, but I close the drawer anyway.

“Get rid of the damn thing,” a mutual friend had said to me six months after the accident. Their face crumpled with instant regret at the calloused words.

Could I blame her? No. I’d bitched about the watch nonstop. I suppose it was my way of coping. I hadn’t cried. Not at the hospital, at the funeral, or when I officially requested to leave the university.

Skipping classes was easy, but drowning in confusion and loss was debilitating. Would going back to class at that time help me? Should I have taken our friend's offer to take their spare room so I wouldn’t be all alone, floundering in the wake of your loss?

Stumbling back toward my bed, I nuzzle in and bury my face into the pillow Clay claimed as his once his occasional stays bled into a daily routine.

The tears threaten to burst through the damn as the ticking intensifies.

“It’s okay to cry,” you’d told me when we first started dating.

“I don’t cry.” You’d busted out laughing at my nonchalant admittance.

Tick-tock.

“I love making you squirm.” Oh hell, did you enjoy nipping at my neck in public spaces. The instant turn-on grappled with my hatred of PDA.

Tick-tock.

How the hell can I still hear it?

Your laughter at my misery from burning at the beach fills my foggy brain. “Damn, Matt. You’re my lobster!”

Tick-tock.

“Why do you keep this damn watch?” I had asked with a wrinkled nose.

“To pass on to our kids.”

The confession had stolen the air from the room. “Our kids?”

Your eyes widened in realization. “If-if that’s what you want….”

“Yes,” I’d answered firmly, pulling your body into me, claiming your lips with my own.

Tick-tock.

How many times had we promised one another forever? An unrealistic, unobtainable promise? There will be no children of ours to hand it down. Does your family even know I have it? Would they miss it?

Catapulting from my bed, I rush to the drawer, rip it open, throw the metal watch on the counter and smash the family heirloom with the pink hammer you teased me for having.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I continue to swing and hit the watch.

Dent after visible dent in the metal container offers a mild release of the bitter anger that has chipped away at my soul for the last unbearable months.

”I’m sorry.”

The ticking continues, and the sound is almost a reprieve as I give the pocket watch a break from the beating.

”Stop saying sorry all the time.” Your words echo in my mind. “You’re always apologizing for no reason.”

This time, I am sorry as the battered hammer ticks away before me, one of the hands glitching as it moves.

Why can’t I be as strong as this metal? Why must your death envelope my soul? I’m a deflated hot air balloon. What could resuscitate me?

“This is why you need to watch more kid’s movies,” you had told me one rainy day as we tucked away from the world. One of the many days we skipped classes.

“Why? To be silly?”

You had rolled his eyes. “No. To learn that no matter how hard life gets, no matter what shit we go through, we’ll be okay.”

“Damn, that’s deep.”

“And it’s true, Matt.” The severe nature carved in your features jolted me. “We’ll be okay.”

Tick-tock.

Your words echo in my mind. We’ll be okay.

Except, I’m all alone. You’re not here. Those green eyes will never meet mine again. I imagine you arguing how you meant ‘we’ collectively as a human species.

Will I be okay?

As I lift the pathetic-looking pocket watch, appreciation etches into my heart. No matter how beat up we get, we can move forward. I can move forward.

Pressing the watch against my chest, I slowly walk to my bed and tuck myself in, glancing at the space beside me you used to occupy. The watch is close to my heart, fingers tracing the new dents. The next ticks from it send waves of relief through my body. The watch, and myself, will never stop ticking forward.

The wave of hope reaches out and latches on to a new idea, the better side of 3 AM. How can I better myself? Where can I go from here that will better myself?