GUNS and POETRY

habit

02 | habit

There are no answers to his questions in these words. It's a complete waste of time, he sighs. Dumping the contents of the shoebox behind, he pushes himself to his feet. Under the newfound weight of his body, every muscle tense up in restricting inertia. His legs wobble, and his barefooted toes curl inside as he almost topples over.

His arms reach out, flailing in front of him uselessly before he manages to straighten himself.

He stares at those empty hands, clutching at the empty air in a desperate habit. Limbs that belong to him, yet alive with a mind of their own. Inside, his heart palpitates from inside his ribs. What did he expect- to find someone to steady him should his steps falter?

This was absurd; he is alone.

But he remembers her. Or at least his body does. The way his arms betray him, reaching out to hold the space where she might have been once not so very long ago, grips his chest with sadness. Maybe there was a time when he did have someone by his side, someone close enough to give him a name, an identity.

With her, he could live.

And now she's gone- a requiem of wishful thinking amidst dancing ghosts. She's gone now, and he's alone.

So terribly, bitterly alone.

*

He cannot remember his name.

No matter how hard he thinks about it, nothing comes. It is frustrating: to know oneself as a stranger; affecting him more than the loss of someone that only survived in the folds of his unconsciousness.

But the harder he tries to think, the harder it becomes to do so. His vision blurs and he falls back on the bed. The pain screams inside his head, engulfing his thoughts from the point between his eyes until it moves to his toes. His fingers clutch at his hair, his skin briefly registering their coarse texture that didn't feel like his own.

Barefooted, his body convulses into a ball of agony, his lungs stripped of oxygen as he screams.

Maybe it lasts a few minutes. Maybe hours. Maybe even more. Time loses its vitality as he remains stranded in that spot, confounded by the demons that bore the white flag of blinding hot pain. He listens to his voice contorted with it, gradually losing its tenor and turning gray and hoarse like the cotton that engulfed him in obliviousness. In all this, the gray wall remains rooted to its spot, witnessing his pain without any consolation; witnessing as the waves torments his limbs and his vision blurs until all that remains are the words that echoed like the swing of an ax:

beautiful but annihilating.

*

The murky water runs down his hands. He knows, with each rinse it comes off clearer. Taking the rice between his palms, he cleans it over and over again, until the water flows down clean.

When he turns around, she is already watching him. "I don't think I've ever seen you cook in this kitchen." Her voice is light but it holds a certain strain of cohort, that makes him force a smile.

"I'm a pretty decent cook, if I do say so myself." He brags, setting the machine. "Or else I wouldn't have been able to survive all these years."

She snorts. "Yeah right. You practically grew up in a castle. No wonder you wouldn't have been able to survive with all that luxury."

When he thinks about it that way, it feels true. Even though, "It's a luxury when you like having people around you. I didn't like being around a lot of people."