eulogy 5
there is a man who ruins every room he enters. he brings a cold wind that smells of burnt paper, a silence so jagged it cuts the words out of throats. he sits at the table and the coffee goes cold; he looks at the window, and the sky turns to lead. he is a monument to every “no” he has heard, a museum of grudges, preserved in salt. you look at him and feel a hallow kind of pity. he is so lonely in his fortress of thorns, standing guard over a kingdom of dust, waiting for an enemy that left years ago.
he has forgotten the sound of his own laughter, replacing it with the low, rhythmic grinding of teeth against teeth in the dark. i want to reach out and touch his shoulder, to tell him the war is over and he can come home. i want to ask him why he’s so afraid to be soft, why he thinks his pain is the only thing keeping his bones from collapsing.
i reach out my hand to steady him. the cold surface of the mirror meets my skin. my fingers touch his fingers, and i realize the person i’ve been mourning, is the man i’ve become.
there is a specific kind of grief in realizing you are the villain of your own story. it’s a heavy coat to wear and doesn’t come off easy.
chloe