After
Outside, they're laughing.
The bittersweet chorus filters into the tent through fluttering flaps separated gently by the evening breeze. Tinged with a hazy golden light, the air is crisp; a new season dawns, washing away last year's stains of hardship, loss, and suffering. The turn of the season marks the first where we're free- truly free- to celebrate it as we wish. The first where we may begin to rebuild. To heal. But not to recover what we've lost.
The first season without him.
Outside, they're laughing. For a moment, it seems as if they've forgotten, as if they've found closure, but even their shrieks of delight are hindered by a heavy undertone which reminds me that I am not alone in my grievances, that I never will be.
Outside, they're laughing, and it's proof that they're trying- proof of their promise to him. I need only fulfill my own.
Alone in the darkness, I bring a trembling hand to the paper in my lap and begin to write.
- - -
Slowly, as if to savor my last moments with him, I sign my name at the bottom. So familiar they are to hurried carvings on a wall he made so long ago. The moment now seems a lifetime away.
I do not cry as I fold the envelope to a close; he gives me the strength not to.
Again, the wind whispers in through the flaps of the tent. I feel the howling of the maze on my cheeks, the gust of the scorch against my temple, and the whipping of wind through my hair from a skyscraper plummet in the last city.
The note flutters in my grasp, and I know it's time to go.
Pressing my lips to the frail paper, my eyes drift shut as I silently, eternally seal away my heart.