Lavender | Wakatoshi Ushijima

40 | Heal

What have you done?

He holds his head in his hands, fingers nestled in his hair. He stares at the carpet floor that has tiny spots of grey. His eyes are so wide. He's almost rocking with denial. He forces himself to breathe.

He looks up at her drained face, his world gone to waste. "I'm sorry." He sucks in a breath, exasperated.

He takes her right hand. He feels the irony grilling him down. He puts his fingers under her hand, slowly taking it into his palm.

It feels like he is holding a stack of bones, toppled around with a weak echo screaming for help. Her hand is so frail. So thin and pale, he is still trembling. Aren't these the hands that write angelic poetry? The hands that helped him find his way to success? The hands that gave him relief with a touch?

He shifts his hand, now overlapping their palms. Teeth quivering, he speaks out. She can't hear him, but he wants to speak. He wants to take the first step at being less of a coward and talk.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He can't get it out, it's stuck in his throat. He feels a lump lodged in his throat, sliding downwards. He hadn't cried in so long. It feels like an eternity since that feeling of a tight throat and stinging eyes visited. But his eyes well as he holds on to her hand, apologizing to her unconscious face that won't react to his words.

"You needed someone, and it should've been me." He squints.

Two tears drop in the mask. He can't hold himself together, she keeps him sane.

He's stabbed in the chest. He feels physical pain at what he's seeing. He watches her chest rising and falling in a painstaking way, barely getting by. So many emotions are hitting him at once. Hana once brought him all kinds of feelings, but now they were all vile and angry.

They're coming back to assault him in every way possible. Relief, with a dagger at hand. Happiness, hands out to strangle him. Even the sadness he pushed away, with a flame of fury in its eye as it looks down on him.

He watches her breathe and he realizes just how much each tired breath of hers kills him, because he can never use his own hands to change that. He can never hold the past like it's a tape and rewind it, picking out his own faults and pulling her out of this hell. He can't save her now, and he isn't surprised at how useless he is.

A couple minutes of silence pass, and then he breaks out, determined to speak.

"I'm sorry, Hana. I'm sorry. Won't you open your eyes? Just this once, please come back and try again. Please, open your eyes," he says, a brush of cracks in his throat.

"Open your bewitching eyes and try again. It's not too late. I promise you, it's not too late. I won't be able to go on any further without you. I can't do it. I can't keep going." He wipes his eyes and runs a hand through his hair.

He finally finds the words, the ones he's been looking for. "It's you, it's always been you. Don't you know? I love you, Hana. But if you leave, you leave me blind. You leave me blind to the beauty of this world. I'll give up on seeing it through your eyes," he speaks softly, as if he's waiting for her to wake.

"We can start over again. We'll start over, and I'll be the one to listen. Come back for Nakamura and Mrs. Sasaki. Come back to write another poem, to take another walk, to pick another lavender. Come back to watch the spring one more time. Come back and tell me about the book you're reading. Come back and talk to me. Come back to me."

He lets his head drop, his face tightening at every tear streaming down. Bitter tears, flowing down to his scrunched nose and into his mouth where his jaw is clenched tighter than prison gates.