Today, like every morning, you came into our room with the breakfast you would inject into my vein.
Nurses had taught you well. As usual, a smile floated on your face, a smile that has become so familiar over our seventeen years together, a smile that keeps me alive as much as the medical equipment I am connected to. Perhaps even more.
For this occasion, you put on your best shirt and stained it with my liquid nutrients as soon as you lifted them to the IV pole. I laughed with you, although my face can no longer show it. Your clumsiness had been one of the reasons I had agreed to a second date with you, hoping you would again trip on your own shoelaces, dive into a rosebush, and launch us into another evening filled with torrents of laughter.
I spent another sleepless night floating among the waves of pain, waiting for the dawn. It has become my best friend, her bright face announcing yours, as if she were trying to comfort me for an hour before you step over the threshold. With the inception of another day, you keep alive our tradition of morning giggles that used to decorate our kitchen, telling one another our crazy and often incomprehensible dreams. Now only your laughter rises towards the ceiling.
Mine is imprisoned in the underworld of the devastated temple that used to be my body.
READ THE FULL STORY IN A SHORT STORY COLLECTION 'HYPNAGOGIA'.
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