Krill

I felt angry at the tree for just growing. I felt angry at the sun for shining and for time passing.

Why did everything carry on when you didn't?

The first steps out of the hospital. My eyes met the daylight, and it felt like an intruder.

I wanted to scream at people for passing by and at Wednesday for moving on to Thursday,

but I couldn’t scream; I held back and heard your silent voice echoing through my mind. 

I wanted to go home and hide in the corner of our bedroom and leave all the lights off, but I didn’t. I kept walking like I promised you.

My phone kept ringing, and the screen's blue light signalled to me that people cared, but I couldn’t talk. I muted my phone like I muted my screams and your voice in my head.

I tried to resist the passing of time. I wanted to freeze it. People passed by on bikes and foot. I felt separated from them by more than just the glass in the window. I wanted the world to share my pain, but no one knew what had been lost.

We had spent Christmas like it was an easily attained luxury we could always return to. 

I remember the traffic in Bangkok on our way back to the airport. We sat in the back of a cab, curled up to each other. Your arm across my shoulder like a seat belt, and your hand touching the top of my breasts. I tickled the spots on your arm where the sun had burnt you. 

The cab swivelled in and out of lanes, and we passed rows of cars honking their horns and blinking at us. You said the streaks of light looked like sighs. I furrowed my brows, looked at you with a mocking smirk, and called you a lazy poet. 

I don’t know if it hurt you, but you replied with a kiss, and I pressed myself deeper into your embrace. Although the driver blasted through traffic, I somehow felt safe.

Not long after we landed, you began to feel ill. At first, you shook it off as jetlag. I don’t know if pride or your fear of needles kept you from going to the doctor, but I remember the morning when I finally persuaded you to go. I was late for work, and I grew impatient with you moaning in bed while brushing my teeth. You were on your side, facing the wall with your back to me. I told you to man up and face your fears, and I refused to bring you a cup of coffee until you made a doctor's appointment. 

You picked me up from work that day. I smelled a new scent on you when you hugged me, and told me about tonga beans. You had read about them on wikipedia and wanted a perfume with tonga beans in them, so you decided to spoil yourself with a new cologne as a gift because you endured hardships at the doctor's. 

I shook my head and smelled the tonga beans. It was like vanilla, something sweet for a child-like person. We shared a cup of mango ice cream, and you told me in great detail about your visit to the doctor and how your headache was stress-related and nothing serious. 

We both felt relieved and brushed the pain off as nothing.

Nothing became a constant guest in our home. Sometimes, when the nothing you felt became too much, you excused yourself to go lie down in the dark. 

Sometimes, I asked you directly if it hurt a lot, but then you would change your voice and half-sing your way out of trouble. 

You always did that, changing your voice to deflect whenever things became intense or sincere. 

It annoyed me.

Still, you carried on through the nothingness, and sometimes, when nothing became very painful, we both called the doctors again, and they reassured you that you were right in your assumptions of this being nothing.

It was early April when nothing became something, and then there was nothing we could do. 

The cold October air cut me on the nose, but I kept walking. 

Every step I took felt as if I betrayed my own grief. 

Grieving is full of rituals and assumptions, but a tingle of comfort smouldered in me when I thought about what you wanted and that I cut a path through our grief by following your promise. I arrived at the square with the little fountain with storks on. We used to pretend we were tourists in our own city. It was a cheap holiday. My stomach contracted in a mournful sigh when I looked at the bar, but I could see you sitting there at a table under the red fabric roof. You were with someone; maybe it was Nico and Mary, but my eyes were blurry with tears. I made sure to look down as I passed you at the entrance to the bar, but I could smell the tonga beans of your perfume. I ran my nails in tiny circles on the bar counter while listening to your laughter. The room had a voice of its own, a blurry brown of narratives, but I could hear you cut through. 

Your laughter, your useless trivia and your desire for fun.

You enjoyed just living in the moment without any deeper aspirations for success than happiness. Sometimes, you could be so practical and unimpressed. Maybe it was an equal love for everything. It felt almost god-like. Sometimes, when you got really deep, you went down a tangent of parallels. I remember the afternoon at the beach. You just sat there in the sand, pensive like a statue and then said how it all reminded you of our camping trips at uni, and for the love of everything, I couldn't find the correlation between the turquoise water of the Bay of Bengal and our autumn weekends with improvised campfires and marshmallows that tasted more of turpentine on the grounds of a vacated factory. 

I tried to call your bullshit like I normally did when you revelled in vague poetry, but you were unwavering. I kicked some sand onto you and said you were like a dog. You could go anywhere, and you would still feel content. You raised your beer in a salute and told me that it was an actual compliment. 

You likened yourself to krill, and you pointed to the freckles on my skin and said they were krill too. We would be swept away before we knew it, eaten by the whale of time. We laughed, but I still didn’t believe you.

As I ordered my beer, I dared to turn around again, and I spied on you through the door. If I looked too closely, I feared you would fade. Instead, I looked slightly to the side, focusing on the leather briefcase on the floor beside your seat. It made the world blur, and you crystalized in that haze. I kept listening to your laughter. I kept listening for fun. I remember asking you in the hospital if there was anything I could do for you as if I could do anything. 

Your gaze became distant, and then you said I should just have some fun.

Frustrations spread through my body like carbon in water; the idea of fun felt almost offensive.

Those visits in the hospital. The pale, mint green walls and the white metallic frame of your bed framed you like a painting. You looked so brave in the hospital bed, and you kept joking about the tubes in your arm. I stopped speaking whenever a nurse entered as if I owed them happiness. 

I felt guilty for being nervous around you. It felt like a first date with death. 

I was afraid to ask you how you were doing. We circled the subject, and I brought you sweets. We discussed the colour of the wrapping, and when you said that the coating on the toffee matched the colour of your yellowing skin, I broke down. Again, you changed your voice and made a David Attenborough imitation and told me that crying would only add more salt water to the earth and that the rising sea levels were dangerous enough without having my tears on top.

Your face morphed into instances of pain, but you told me that you were glad that you could feel pain. You told me that you didn't want to go quiet into death.

You loved me too much to just fade out, and you would rather kick and scream to stay.

I wanted you to stay. I loved you for your pain, and I tried to press my heel against time. 

I wanted to slow everything down.

but I saw how you faded or how death entered. 

Death was not linear; it lagged in its motions like a seagull flying up against strong winds.

I looked at you through the bottom of my glass. The glass distorted reality and twisted bodies out of shape. You were still there, a fun little man, but I let you be. I give you peace, and instead, I lean into your voice as I think about your useless trivia and all the fun we had.