Work Text:
I have not, he thinks, not really, not let go. I cannot have. I am still here, where he was—where I was, we were—I remember how we were, in word and deed and unseen look—he had forgotten so much, I cannot know that I did not colour his life with mine, we who saw life so dissimilarly.
I am here, he thinks, and I remember, but memory is so feeling—can I remember what happened, what he saw happening? I live in my flesh, what can I know of his, so suffering, so scarred—my own scars overwhelm my knowledge, leave it like a stranded child sorrowing.
I remember, he thinks, but I have forgotten deliberately all the horror, till my memories are overexposed photographs all uniformly yellowed. I remember he was never me but have forgotten that though I hated myself I resented his holding himself so apart.
I speak, he thinks, of him softly into the night when only I can hear the voice rumbling through my flesh. I am silent when others speak of him—all their words are as pieces of him glittering tinsel I gather like a hoarding magpie and piece together in the brittle shine of glass.
I have not, he thinks, not really, not let go. I have still one hand outstretched towards the door he disappeared through—so quietly he went, like a drugged man into comatose slumber—but the hand I grasp is no longer his own and his ghost speaks in sorrowing echo of my voice.