The cold air of January pulsated around me and threatened my flesh with a pattern of goosebumps and I shivered to warn it off. I peel back the thin sheet that had protected me as I slept and I draped over the foot of my bed.
This was the coldest January on record for almost nine years, meaning my child had not discovered the bitterness of the world around him. He had not yet felt how cold the world really could regard his presence and treat him like he was nothing but a block in the wind, causing the push past him to, if it wished, knock him off his emaciated legs and create a piercing sound of crying as he hit the floor unexpectedly, because the blast of air that adults knew all too well doesn't gently place you on the ground, it knocks you over carelessly and doesn't even give you the reassurance that it was for anything at all other than 'just because' like the way a bully in school would turn around to look at you after knocking you down. The wind did not care enough to bother to look back.
I looked around my bedroom and shuddered at the thought that the other side of my bed was empty.
He left pretty much as soon as the incident happened. Looking around the rest of my space, I sighed, my eyes were still tired and the room around me looked an eerily shade of blue, it was just before the sun was to rise and let everyone know that they have another day (but don't dare take it for granted, as one day I may not rise.)
I felt that the world around me had had hours spent upon it, emending it, to look this way, and this way was so far out of my control. I guess you could call that my interpretation of God or something other than humans— higher, immortal, certainly something so suspenseful it feared people so much into respecting just an idea rather than the none-existent factual proof. I rolled my eyes as a reminder to myself that errands were to be ran and tasks to complete rather than sit in bed as if I had all the time in world, like a teenager, to contemplate the idea of higher beings.
I swung my legs out of the bed, battered and bruised thighs, kneecaps, shins and ankles stinging at the cold air, I held back a hiss at the unexpected cold against my bare skin. I passed a mirror on the way to the door and realised I was still black and blue.
I wish that I could feel the warmth of my son as he jumped from him slumber and grab my neck and clung his little body to mine, but that will never happen again. I will never wake him for pancakes on a Sunday morning, or throw him his uniform on a rushed Monday. His blonde hair will never be warm with the heat of August and his cheeks will never be red raw with sunburn.
I walked past his bedroom, the door has never been closed since that evening, I couldn't bare to trap him inside those four walls, for all eternity, or at least until I moved house or died and somebody decided to knock the house down, ruin the foundation and any sort of memories that were safely kept inside of it.
I wanted to trap the air inside of the man that took him away from me, trap it inside of him until it built up in his lungs so much that it caused them to rupture and he died right there and then, because he took my son away from me, but what kind of sick human loved the man who killed their child?
Me. I did. And I didn't like that, but I couldn't refrain from the feeling. I just had to deal with it and pretend for the cameras that I hated his guts, and every other part of his anatomy.
I sipped my black coffee and the steam rose to my eyes and gathered at the back of my throat that caused me to miss a breath. The ringing of my phone distracted me from this and I set the mug on the marbled surface of the island in my kitchen almost abruptly, and definitely didn't think of the repercussions if the liquid dared dance too high and spill over onto the surface. Or how much that would set me behind schedule.
"Yes," I answered, my voice was deep and raspy as it was the first thing I had said since the previous night and so I coughed as the other person began to speak.
