To Share You (manxman)

Chapter 49

We stand there, side by side, hand in hand. Neither of us says anything, my mind completely blank as I'm assuming is his. It's a strange feeling, a feeling we shouldn't have to have and yet it's there, it's prominent and it's not going away.

We've chosen an ancient tree, one of those trees that never really dies, that stands tall against everything that fights it; one that is so different from me. I feel like the little bit of wind I can feel on my skin will blow me away any minute and I feel like the leaves it whirls up are going to bury me underneath them.

Raph is clasping my hand with a desperation that almost makes me want to cry. He doesn't move or speak, but his pain is obvious. In fact, my own knees are barely holding me upright at this point. Pain is a funny thing. It cripples you in the most cruel way, breaking you bit by bit from the inside, but leaves you looking perfectly fine on the outside.

The grass is quite high here, and slightly damp from the cold and rainy night, the morning dew still desperately clinging to it. My legs are wet right up to the middle of my thighs, but I barely notice. No one really comes here, an undisturbed place, quiet and serene; perfect.

Eventually, Raph lets go of my hand, takes a single step forward and kneels down. It almost looks like he's falling, and maybe he actually is, because now he's shoulder deep in the grass, head low and hands bunched into the fabric of his trousers. With every gentle gust of wind I can see more dark spots and lines appear on his shirt where the grass touched it. With every touch, he flinches a tiny bit, as if it shocks him. The damp on his clothes slowly claims more of his trousers the longer he sits there, the dark swallowing up their original colour, and I'm strangely fascinated by the process that happens fast enough for me to see a progression, but slow enough for me to not notice its ascension. His fingers relax and grip his trousers in a maddening slow speed and I wonder if it helps keep the feelings at bay, if it helps to feel your cold, wet fingers hurting while they move and your fingertips burning as you dig them into the fabric repeatedly.

His eyes are trained on the little mound at the base of the tree, where the earth is a touch fresher than anything else - even though it had rained - and where it isn't quite as flat and as perfect as everywhere around it; the place where we, just a few minutes ago, piled the earth just high enough for us to know its location.

I am still about five steps away from it, Raph four and a half, and somehow it's hard to get closer. It's hard to be in that space, and even at five steps away, I feel like running. Because the further I am from that little mound on the floor, the further I am from my pain. I know, logically, that pain doesn't work that way, especially not with this, but I can't help but feel that way. And I know Raph feels the same by how his leg keep twitching and his shoulders are far from relaxed.

He sits there for a while, while I stand next to him, half a step behind, unsure of whether I'm staring at Raph or at the little mound of soil in front of that strong tree. I look down at my hands, wet and dirty from when we moved the ground earlier, dirt still under my finger nails from when we dug and on my palms from when we moved everything back.

Eventually, he stands up. He moves towards the little lump with slow, small steps, only to kneel back down right in front of it and reach out. He stops right before he can touch, hovers as if torn. His hand is barely any distance from the soil, yet it isn't touching, and when his fingers curl to touch his palm and make a fist, I know they never will. He gets to his feet quickly and just stands there. His face is tilted towards the sky, almost as if waiting for something to happen. But there is no illumination by thunder, no hole in the clouds to let through a tiny speck of sunlight, no rain to touch his face, it simply stays grey. The aftermath of the rain we just missed, the same aftermath that has been in the sky since we decided to come here. Yet he stays, as if waiting, doesn't move and the moisture from the grass drips down his arms where it's the strongest and glues his clothes to his body everywhere else and he looks drowned. He looks helpless and small and I close my eyes. It's hard to watch him, who I care about so much more than anything else in life, suffer like that. And yet he's the one who's taken these steps forward, who has said goodbye properly, and I'm the one who is still unable to move, who still feels that the only direction I can move to is backwards, away from it and I know I'm the coward, yet seeing him still hurts. And so my eyes stay closed, my brows furrowed and my mouth set in a thin line.