Losing Place

The following is a fiction piece and I confess, I am NOT a fiction writer but I'm exploring a story and what you see here is a work in progress. I will update from week to week and see where it goes.

She had always looked to him--he was her gauge, her way of knowing if she was doing things right--showing her she mattered. Theirs was a partnership born out of necessity and availability--they needed each other and they were all they had.

She wondered, out loud, if she had been enough--good enough, there enough, open enough. So much of their lives had been marred by uncertainty, heartache and deprivation. She felt, she continued, that her every waking moments were orchestrated outside of herself and often in spite of herself--it was stifling.

She rolled from her back to her side and looked over at where he lay and she wondered if he had even heard her words--these words, these confessions that she desperately needed him to hear.

The sun was warm on her skin--they had chosen a nice spot--sunny in the cooler morning hours and shaded in the afternoon. The landscape was beautiful and the flowers she bought from the florist this morning really livened up their spot. Sunflowers were his favorite. From the moment she showed him the seeds inside the center of a withered flower in the community garden, he had loved them. She remembered. He thought she was magic and she loved letting him think that.

She took a deep breath and rolled to her back again on the checkered cloth she had spread a few hours earlier. It was time. She finally told him about leaving. I have to, she explained. There was too much standing in her way here, "and besides, I think I've finally figured out how to live--you remember, I told you that once, that mama just couldn't figure out how to live and you looked at me all puzzled and big and with all the seriousness in your little heart you said but mama, you're doing it. I laughed at your sweetness but mama didn't get it then, you remember? Ah, but now, I got me some perspective and your mama, she's gonna be something."

She looked up, not sure what to expect or what she thought she might see and the smile never left his lips. "Well, say something" but she knew he wouldn't, he couldn't.

She felt a surprising anger welling up inside of her and bit her lip as the tears won out and made their way down her soft brown cheeks. She put her hand on the cold marble stone and surrendered to the moment that everyone told her would come. She allowed her fingers to trace the years of his life permanently etched as if sealing a deal, closing a book. She laid the photograph she had been staring at face down on the ground and tried to recall his face without the reminder, before the accident changed him forever in her mind. Submitting to her pain, finally, she spread her body across the ground.

"You were always the life within me" she whispered into the earth, willing the words to find their way to him. She began to read his favorite story, memorized from all of his 'one more time mamas'--the absence of his echoing voice on certain lines caused a sickening churning in her stomach but she didn't stop the story. She never stopped it then and she sure as hell wouldn't stop it now.

As she was walking away she turned once more to look over at where he lay--she wanted him to run to her, to grab her leg and hang on to her as she playfully pulled him along, just one more time. But now, his finality rose up as the only clarity in her mind as she looked back on the stone that marked where their life left off and she returned to a life without the only compass she had ever known.