chapter 2
1207 Words
The outside air was now cooler. It was time to get off and the streetlights came alive with a hum, and it was that blue-gray twilight time before the night came. I put my hands into the pockets of my coat, and went with no real aim--only that I was going--I hoped to get my mind to stop talking.
My mind would not stop thinking about Helen and James.
The way he smiled at her. The way she rolled her eyes, but softened when he looked away.
Love like that was real. It was warm and ridiculous and full of flaws—but it stayed.
And it left behind pieces when it ended.
I did not want to be an object, a tattoo that a person must live with.
Perhaps the only way I could ever caress love even momentarily was to allow myself to give love to a person who could not offer it in return.
Someone that would not grieve me.
My phone rang.
I pulled it from my pocket. Mom.
I answered, breath fogging in the cold. “Hey.”
“Where are you, baby?” Her voice was casual but gentle.
“Just finished at the shelter. Walking home.”
“You didn’t wait for a ride?”
“I needed some air.”
She paused. “Okay. Just don’t stay out too long, it’s cold tonight.”
“I won’t,” I said.
“Alright then. I’ll leave your dinner on the stove.”
“Thanks, Mom. Love you.”
“Love you too, sweetheart.”
The call ended.
But the silence it left behind was louder than before.
And just like that—my heart drifted backward.
I was fifteen when my father died.
The house smelled like mint cough drops and hospital sheets long before they wheeled the oxygen tank in.
He used to hum while shaving. Always wore the same gray sweater on Sundays. The person who constantly asked me whether I wanted a bite off his plate even when I refused to agree. It was this kind of shouty laugh, a laugh that made it all seem to be ok even when it was not.
It is true that my parents were not perfect, yet in love.
Real love. The kind that did not have to make big feats. The type who resided in an exchange of grocery lists and how they grabbed the hands of their fellow in the car. I would sneak and catch them in the kitchen dancing around at a slow pace when I supposedly was asleep. More often than not my mom would tell him something and he would smile the entire face.
They were each other in a sense that the world appeared to be smaller.
And then he got sick.
It started with fatigue. Then weight loss. Coughing. Tests. Blood. Words I didn’t understand.
And then one I did: cancer.
I remember the way my mom clutched the results, how her knuckles turned white. She didn’t cry in front of him. Not once. She waited until the bathroom door was shut before she broke.
And me?
I just watched.
Watched my father shrink inside his body.
Watched my mother pretend to be strong when she was breaking.
Watched the silence grow thicker than the air.
He stopped singing. Then walking. Then eating.
And when he died, he didn’t look like himself.
He looked like someone who had already left days ago.
Someone who let go before we were ready.
---
The funeral was small.
Cold.
Rainy.
I recall clinging to the hand of my mother when they were lowering his body into the ground but she never relaxed her grip even a bit- it felt like she was scared she would fall into the grave with him.
Yet the part that they do not discuss is what goes next.
After the flowers. After the casseroles. After the condolences.
The real grief begins in the quiet.
My mother changed.
Not all at once. Not dramatically. But slowly. Daily. Like erosion.
She still made breakfast, but stopped playing music while she did it.
She still packed my lunch, but forgot to smile.
She still spoke, but never with the same brightness.
She would lay two cups every morning months after, one was hers and the other was that of the dad who will never drink again.
I would occasionally wake up to see that she slept by the couch with the television on and dried up tears on her cheeks.
She didn’t live anymore—she just existed.
And I watched it. All of it.
How love had once lit her like fire, and now left her cold and haunted.
That’s when I learned something people don’t understand until it’s too late:
The most beautiful kind of love is the most dangerous.
Because when it ends, it doesn’t let you go.
It stays behind like smoke.
It coats your skin. Your lungs.
You carry it into every room long after the flame has gone out.
---
I promised myself, then, as I stood outside that closed bedroom door listening to my mother cry—
I would never do to someone what my father unknowingly did to her.
I would never let anyone love me.
Because love becomes grief, and grief ruins people.
I saw it firsthand.
And that’s why I built walls.
Tall ones.
All through high school, I kept to myself.
No best friends. No drama. No sleepovers or late-night phone calls.
Boys asked me out—I smiled politely and said no.
Some tried harder, offered compliments and sweet words, flowers and flirty confidence.
But I didn’t want their attention.
I didn’t want anyone attached to me.
Because what if they stayed?
What if they saw me—really saw me—and felt something?
And then I died?
No.
I couldn’t let someone carry that weight.
Not for me.
So I became the quiet girl. The background girl. The one who worked hard and disappeared the moment the bell rang.
University was the same.
I stayed invisible by choice.
There were days I wanted to reach out—to laugh with someone in the cafeteria, to say yes when someone asked if I wanted to join a study group.
But I didn’t.
Because every connection felt like a seed I was too afraid to water.
What was the point of starting something when I knew exactly how it would end?
If I ever fell in love, it had to be a one-way street.
No ties. No roots. No grief waiting in the corners.
If I was going to feel love before I died, it had to be with someone who didn’t have the heart to miss me.
Someone who wouldn’t carry me after I was gone.
Someone broken. Cold. Detached.
Maybe even cruel.
Because that kind of person wouldn’t grieve me.
And maybe… just maybe… that was the only kind of love I could have now.
---
I stopped walking.
The wind had stilled. The air around me was sharp and unmoving, like even the night was holding its breath.
And I whispered to the empty street,
“I just want to feel something before I die.
Just once.”
- Writer
