Wide Open

jdevau
Jan 20, 2016
2 min read

The ease of it all should have been explained. That one moment he could be there, and the next, simply vanished from my sights because of something simple...something minute in the structured flaw of our fallout. I wrapped around myself the icon of our most intimate moments, feeling the blanket on our bed cool from the body heat he'd left as a signature barely minutes ago.

In my head, I thought up parallel universes. I imagined some quantifiably precise solution to the chewing, nagging ache that had begun to eat at my heart.

My fingers creaked as I held the blanket around my shoulders.

If I'd said his name, would he have stopped to reconsider? Maybe we could have attributed my outburst to something uncontrollable--genetics, gender, the momentum of time? I tried it now; his title a brief kiss between my chapped, tear salted lips and the air.

"Alex...?"

To most, the sight of an empty room is not overwhelming. To anyone else at this exact fragment of time, without context, without plot, without visible, tangible design, I would have simply looked the part of a young woman seeking security from an old comforter. Alone. In her two bed, one bath apartment. Staring at space that until ten minutes ago had been occupied by what she'd considered the most beautiful creature on the planet.

Instead I was lonely. The sensation wasn't instantaneous. It wasn't some spur of the moment epiphany that I'd stumbled upon while looking him in the face and musing to myself. This was a concept dawned on me over the course of days, weeks, months. I was lonely--had been, lonely. Even with a living, breathing person right alongside me, I'd lost touch with both myself and him. My verbal revelation had simply been too abrupt. I hadn't explained the steps of my torment as they'd been inflicted upon me. I hadn't opened my mouth to try to fix the problem preemptively!

I blinked. "Alex."

My space was empty. About my shoulders, the gray, pin striped comforter he'd left behind was chilly. I couldn't tell where the fabric began and my skin ended because everything suddenly matched the monochrome of my world without someone else to occupy it with me.