erosion of the heart

the sun

I wake up to you. I smell the rain outside, the scent of it drifting through the open window, like the smell of a fulfilling breakfast that wakes me from downstairs. It's July, but it rained throughout the dawn. I heard it in my dreams, the way it fell to the ground like a diver into the ocean, slow but free-falling, determined and sure in its speed and turbulence. And then I hear you: the sunlight streaming through the closed blinds, gentle but firm in easing me out of the warm and delicate sheets. The clatter of plates and cutlery, the crackling of food being fried, your methodical approach to chopping up the vegetables.

So then I throw the covers off myself. I stretch, yawn, run a hand through my bedraggled cocoon of top-knotted hair. I breathe in the summer, breathe it out. Continuing my way downstairs, I tread lightly.

The sun becomes louder with each step I take, easing my soul into the late morning, gently carrying me to the start of the day. One stair down, the blinds automatically draw themselves open; another, and the blue in the sky of every window in this house appears; another stair down, the colouration of this bright house saturates itself to the maximum.

I am smiling so hard, but then - everything goes dark as I reach the floor of this empty house. The sun dies in my palms, the blinds snap shut like a tiger's jaws around its prey, the blue eclipses to black, and I open my eyes.

I don't wake up to you. I smell the decay outside, the scent of it drifting around the house, like the smell of a crushed heart. It's July, but this July has seen sunlight as opposed to a summer rainfall. Slow and staggering, clumsy in the way it brushes the ground. And then I don't hear you: the sunlight leaking and watery, making me turn over in this somehow cold bed, urging me to fall back asleep. But there is a screaming silence downstairs, and beside me too.

I don't hear you at all.