She wanted to die.
He wanted to live.
•••
A hand grabbed onto my wrist, yanking me back just as the train rushed past, before I'd even had time to comprehend whether or not I'd carry out the action. I stumbled back into the person's chest, my hear...
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I hadn't realised how difficult it was to breathe.
It was a natural mechanism to breathe in and breathe out on a daily basis; an intrinsic decision we all subconsciously made every second.
Yet, since Romeo had been gone, breathing had felt like more of a chore rather than a necessity.
He made me breathless in a paradoxically calming way, but at the exact same time he made me feel like I could finally breathe. Logic didn't seem to matter when it came to him and I, because I would have never taken another breath if I could feel his gaze on mine one more time. He made me dizzy and made everything feel hazy; yet nothing had ever seemed clearer than during that night we spent together.
I had once thought that the hardest part of losing him would be learning how to breathe again without his presence - some nights I had almost followed after my namesake and deliberated with darkness over how best to stop the continual feeling of my incessant guilt. Some nights I had wound up moments away from dangerous decisions that Theo had to pry out of my hands before I had sobbed in his arms and held onto him like I was afraid he might die too if I let him go.
I had thought that oxygen was the thing I needed most in life, the thing that would sustain me through my pain to keep me going through each day. I had thought that as long as there was air in my lungs then I had the potential to be okay, because I was alive – I was surviving and I was breathing.
I hadn't realised that the hardest part of healing would be watching others go through the pain with me.
It didn't sink in that Mr Hart was also grieving until I started hearing him leave the house every morning, just before dawn. In the early hours of every morning for majority of the first year, he would leave the house with a small bouquet of flowers and return an hour or so later with a teary gaze. It was only later when I spoke to him that I realised he had been tending to Romeo's grave, and still did once a week.
It didn't sink in that Theo was also grieving until one day he refused to leave his room, scrolling through social media to look at all the photos of Romeo's graffiti pieces he had never seen before. I sat with my back against the door since he had locked me out, only for him to open the door hours later with puffy eyes and a hoarse voice when he finally let me in.
One summer, we dedicated a whole month to visiting all of Romeo's artworks, talking about our experiences through Romeo's social media accounts. At each spot, Theo would spray paint on something small, not directly beside the graffiti but close enough so it was clear that the two were connected somehow. Starting with phrases like 'I'm sorry' to 'I wish I could have understood', each time he gained a little bit of closure towards the situation.
But the person I had least expected to affect me the most hadn't been Theo, or Mr Hart, or Tabitha or even myself.
It had been seeing the light go out in Mrs Hart: watching her lose her infectious smile and open arms that she was always hauling someone into for a hug. It was seeing her completely enveloped in darkness – snuffing out any candles offered her way – that was the harshest reality check I had faced.
