Somehow There's Still Sunlight

for Wayne and Lori Earl

i. 

The dreams come to me in the coldest hours of the morning, when I am covered in blankets, and even with the heater blazing, the marrow in my toes is frozen. They are not lovely, they are not beautiful things, but black phantasms from tartarus that wind through my ribcage, making me cough and cry and ache. 

Today is day 1193. God help me. 

I know that I am supposed to sleep. I know that I am supposed to wake up. But my life has largely consisted of the middle way, 100 million odd seconds of haze, arranged in long procession. Oh my dear, I have taken the long, low road through death’s valley, where rock formations create strange shadows, prismatic vortices of hell’s miasma when viewed through the persistent film of tears that will simply not leave my eyes. 

That, love, is a moment, a second, a day like any other since you left, blurred beyond recognition. I do not begrudge your release, for I knew your hours dragged on, fire and ice plugged into your skin, veins hoping for sustenance, but finding only vain and empty promises.  

I do not begrudge you your release, I only wonder when my eyes will dry; when will I be able to see the world without your light?

ii.

They do not tell you that, eventually, everybody goes. Yes, they understand pain, until the pain drags on. They have loves, and they have lives, and after a while, one becomes a blossom in the forest, a pest-gnawed wildflower that will either live or die, and is of no concern. I have managed to weather the seasons by a thorn’s breadth, I have managed to keep on in this quiet stasis, excruciated, but alive.

iii.

Perhaps you don’t see the sunlight in these dark thoughts, but I promise you that it’s there. Dawn is not instantaneous, and indeed, she marches with slow regiment and staid steps. There is a certain sturdiness to dawn’s first light, a sturdiness that I still aspire to.

I fail, in most moments and on most days. My heart pumps in retrograde, and my eyes look back to the brighter days with rose lenses and a dunce’s cap. 

I have worshiped your memory with a simple stupidity, failing to see the complexities inherit in a beating heart and electric mind. I have brought you down to my level, and made you about me. I have been selfish in my pain, and needlessly cruel in my depression; to myself first, but to others too. I adjust my glasses and curse Retrospect her perfect vision.

I confess my shortfallings readily, but it is harder to rectify them. You will have to be patient with me; allow the sunlight to filter through my leather skin and iron defenses. 

I am not selfless. I am not even good, most of the time, but I remember being better, reflected in the cerulean of your eyes. And that, I think, is the message of my pain: my world was better with you.

But now I must function. I made a false star out of you, and now I must recognize true sunlight, dim in comparison, but honest.