i pushed you down deep in my soul for too long;

[wingborne]

He had meant to attend the party. His clothes, laid out, his hair, brushed, his present, ready. As the clouds rumbled unsteadily above him, he sat at his kitchen table. He had a very stately way of sitting, legs open, balancing his sharp elbows on his knees, leaning forward into his fingers, but his back, straight.

The sharp pattering of the rain fell on his windows and he was dying.

An ache slowly wedged into his stomach, crawling along his intestines. His head rang and his throat felt dry and heavy, and every swallow scraped the desert of his tongue. His joints ached, his tendons strung like the arch of a bow. He breathed heavily and tried to flex his fingers, tried to press them alongside his jaw to have feeling.

But it was the beginning of July and he hurt, ached, with loss. Was it his leg? Or his arm? Perhaps just his fingers, the loss of his fingers, the numbness. He was nothing but phantom limbs and phantom hopes, and the strickening pain hurried alongside his side, business to do, places to go. His heart tried to pound blood, but it felt like somebody had taken a knife to his hand, and chopped it off. Not cleanly, at that, sawing through his tendons and muscles to the white of his bone and the hollow of his marrows and all the blood languidly puddle around him and he wanted to move his fingers but he had none to move and all the loss filled up his heart. He was barely moving, but he was sweating, and trembling. His jacket had been casually tossed onto a nearby chair, but everything was miles away.

A grandfather clock stood in the hallway of his house, its pendulum thick and heavy. It told him, in lonesome tolls, that he would be late to a very important date if he didn’t move.

He tried to be rational to himself, even as a paralyzing pain ran through the veins of his forehead and alongside his side and into his throat. He tried to drag himself up from the table, but he nearly collapsed back into the chair. Still, he managed to move himself to the living room to where everything was dark and empty, and a little bit cold, because it was raining.

After fumbling around in the dark, he managed to sit on his couch and close his eyes, breathing shallowly. Every now and then, his breath hitched brokenly as a stab of pain coursed through him, but he settled himself back into the peace. He would be late, he told himself, if he didn’t leave now, and the journey was far. But even as he tried to stand, his fingers flinched numbly and curled into themselves, and the stabbing pains in his stomach penetrated into his skin.

He pushed his warm hands onto his stomach to try and hold his intestines inside, tried not to shudder. It was a birthday party, and he would need to put on his best face. Still, heavy fatigue rested on his eyes and though he tried to keep awake to the ticking of the grandfather clock, his eyes closed and he slept fitfully.

Delusions weaved in and out of his dreams. He thought he heard someone come into his house, though it was an obscure location, and he knew he had locked the door. He thought he heard someone carefully enter into his kitchen, rattle the present he had left on the table, thought he heard someone come into the living room and find him.

He would have made a pale, pasty sight, curled into himself with barely a breath on his lips. He tried to wake up out of the dream, but his flickering eyes only made the imaginary burglar whisper something, and something warm rested on his forehead for a while. He wasn’t feverish, he didn’t think, but his insides did boil tremendously, and he tried to speak to the intruder, but his choking only seemed to shake the walls of his dreams.

Eventually, the intruder left, and came back with a blanket. He slipped into a darker sleep, then, and when he awoke, it was July 5th and he had missed everything. But the pain gently subsided, almost dutifully, as if kind to his pains. When the feeling had returned back to his fingers, he stumbled for the nearest phone to tell America that he would bring by his present later.

He nearly tripped over the blanket from his shoulders in his hurry, but the message got through, and tired, he returned back to sleep in a dreamless, haunted state for a while.

The next year, he bought his present and despite the numbness of his fingers, he dressed himself slowly and descended the stairs early that morning. But there was a knocking, a visitor, and the birthday guest himself had arrived, saying something or other with a burger stuffed in his mouth. For a second, his heartbeat fluttered in his wrist, because the pain was most today and this was the only person he didn’t want to see.

But he made him some tea, and they sat, and they talked. He knew that he wasn’t good at conversation, the pain stitched his lips shut, but America carried on well enough for the both of us, and if he noticed that his host grew quieter and paler as the day waned on, he let nothing on. He had brought burgers and they ate them, and then America insisted on watching television, and squeezed himself into the couch so tightly that his elbow always touched the phantom arm, and it felt nice, the numbness notwithstanding.

When he fell asleep, he dreamt that a warm hand touched his forehead, brushing the wisps of his hair, big and sturdy. He had many dreams, but they were nicer than usual. When he woke up, America had gone, taking his present with him. But when he reached the kitchen, he noticed a small note on the table.

See you next year.