The Black of My Grief

We stare into each other.

We are at the airport. We have said countless I-love-you-s, but it does not seem enough. We look at each other more. We hold. We hug. We whisper. We kiss. People stop to gawp. We hardly see them. They think we have lost our marbles. We do not care. Everything else has slowed down; the blunt wind that was cutting into the air moments ago is just but a distant hum now. The conversations around come to me in a soft harmony like the radio I listen to every night to drive me to sleep, the cars dropping off people walk by. I see nothing.

Except your eyes.

They stand out from your face. They carry the story of your life; people need only to meet your eyes and they would know you. I have seen them glow, fill with warmth and talk to me. I have never seen them this way though. I look harder, I beg for them to talk to me. It is through your eyes that I get into you, your mind and your being. It is also how I got into your life. That day two years ago when I was looking for a Murakami at the street book vendor in town. You heard me ask the vendor and in two shakes you had spotted me The Norwegian Wood and passed it to me. I would like to say the rest is history. But no the rest is nothing like history. The rest is love.

I hold you closer to me and look searchingly into your eyes. I look for love, for sorrow…for anything. I find nothing. I hear you murmur you love me. I want to tell your eyes to give me something but the words that escape from my mouth in a feathery undertone say I love you back. As I hug you tight to my chest I hope that your eyes will talk to me. They don’t. This time I read nothing in there.

I cling a bit tighter against you. A part of me wants you to stop me; to tell me to stay. To tell me in that honey sweet voice that we will think of something. A part of me also knows you’d never say that. It is what draws me to you like that, the way you love without caging me. How many times have you told me that you love me most when I am out there soaring?

‘One year’

Your voice brings me back. Yes, I will be gone for one year. We have talked about this. We will take the year to work hard in our different ventures, set some sort of foundation onto which we will build our future. When I come back we will get joined in holy matrimony before friends and family. We have our wedding planned to detail. We have agreed to theme it yellow; I don’t particularly like yellow- I would have preferred black but I agree to it all the same. Whatever you wish, as long as you keep shining in my life like the yellow sun. The prospect excites me; I am ready to marry you even as we speak in this very airport before strangers. As if reading my mind you say ‘let’s get married here and now’.

The call for my flight comes through before I can say anything at all.

We don’t say goodbye, we have already agreed to no goodbyes. You look at me and say ‘See you today in later’.

‘See you today in 2012’ I whisper back and look into your eyes one last time, hoping that in them I would see the rest of my life with you. I am not sure I do. I feel my heart crack a bit.

The next time I see your eyes you are looking up from my computer; on a feature in that famous wedding blog. You are sharp in your yellow suit; you’ve cleaned up really well. I notice you have styled your Afro just as I like it. I notice you have on that silver watch I bought you for your birthday last year, the one you liked so much and promised to keep for our wedding day. Our wedding.

Why am I sitting here oceans away looking at our wedding? I shut my computer knowing tonight I will cry us oceans of tears. The tears my roommate would not want me to shed. She looks up from the polished nails she just did, and asks i she could do mine. She expects the usual no. And when I say yes, faltering, she asks my preferred colour.

“Paint them the color of my grief. Pain them black” I manage a whisper.

*****

Judyanne Muchiri is also the author of a a flash fiction I fell in love with. It’s called Lemons and Pancakes. Read it here on African Plato, where she spends most of her time. Catch up with her on Facebook and Twitter too.

 *****

PHOTOS CREDIT: By Evans Dims

Facebook Page: Dims Photography & Video

Twitter; @DimsEvans