I Remain

You are not here, but I hear you everywhere.

You are in everyone, everything, and yet nothing exists anymore, outside of you. Every day feels karmic, a consequence for lapse of judgment. You are my eternal sorrow, my precise reason for psychosomatic terror. I feel you entrenched behind my mind; my conscience draped around my throat while simultaneously aching deep down inside my core.

I feel you forgive me, but I cannot escape while I live inside my guilt driven agony. You are not here, and the fault is my own. You were my soul purpose; I woke each day for you and now I sleep all day without you.

I ask myself what I did to deserve this but how harrowingly selfish to question it as I know it is my blame. An innocent moment became an eternal offence on you. The literal light of my life, you were the first best day of my life, that was when I had you, when I held you, now I hold you differently.

I will never drive again, where would I go anyway? Everything I did was for your future, and now anything since is in vain of mine, as I move backwards indefinitely, to where you were still physical. There is irony in always looking back because that is ultimately what ended your life, and now it is my torment.

This world still yearns for your presence, I swear even the sun prays not to rise, since you have been gone. These sad hours are long, this is true essence of mortality, in every moment I feel increasingly mortal, every day I get closer to being with you again. I feel a pull to your side, I need to wash your hair of the day and assure you of your worth when you doubt yourself.

It is why I was born, to be your mum, but you were not of this world, although I am sure you were here for its benefit. I cannot help but think of your future more than ever, which seems like a cruel trick.

I know my escape, but I can not leave. I can not inflict this pain on others as I wish to inflict on myself. I must keep reminding myself of this, every day, although I do not feel real anymore, as my earthly presence diminishes quickly with your absence, I still exist to others, so here I remain, I pray for natural selection, I pray for life-taking luck.

I remain at the end of life as we knew it, staring into this washing machine as these quaking thoughts go around, and around just like it. I have been on this laundry floor this entire wash cycle, with not a slight of urgency to go anywhere, or be anything, except your mum. Your dirty clothes still sit in your untouched room. I will not wash them.

Everything is where you left it, including me.

“You need to get up mum” I hear you, but I cannot see you, so I fight with what is left of my rational mind, to convince myself that your voice is not my imagination, that you are here with me. I would rather be mad for the rest of my life then live a day without your voice inside my head.

When you speak through me it gives momentary peace that you forgive me for our last moment together, and that you still love me, as I do you, through our two worlds vail.

You are here.

On that day, you were six, when you sat in the backseat, holding marigold flowers.