Everything about her is tired and slow. It’s painful for me to watch her as she fades away.
Yet, I know that she’s ok with it. This is what she wanted.
Because we all have choices.
Every moment is a choice.
And this; it’s her choice.
And now; we make due.
She looks at me over her food, gray hair falling across her forehead.
‘You know, I think we should go for a walk.’
‘You know that you can’t walk too far. Your knee’s are too weak.’
‘I know, I just thought it would be nice.’
And we both go back to eating.
We’re silent.
I don’t think.
I don’t think, but I do manage to react.
And so I’m on top of Dylan before he can process what’s going on.
He didn’t expect to see me today, this much is obvious.
I push him to the ground and pin him with all my weight.
I bar my forearm against his throat.
He struggles but I don’t let up.
Everything inside of me is white hot.
Everything inside of me is on fire.
And through the blood in my ears, I can hear Evaline screaming.
I can hear her screaming, but I can’t seem to care about it.
I push harder.
His face goes red.
My cheeks are burning up and I can feel my muscles struggling against my skin.
He’s kicking his feet up.
He’s trying to knock me off of him.
‘You motherfucker.’
The words come out of my mouth without much thought.
The words come out of my mouth with silent rage.
And I’m not sure why I’m doing this.
But I do feel that it’s what I should be doing.
My body starts to shake from the adrenaline.
And then I feel Evaline’s hands on my shoulder. Trying to pull me off. Trying to snap me out of this insanity.
‘Ellis!’
And she’s screaming.
And all I can think is that this man has spent far too much time with my wife. All I can think of is the fact that this man stole Evaline from me.
Dylan, he tries to speak.
Sound ambles out of his mouth in a choked stuttering.
He can’t say anything.
And finally, Evaline, she pulls me off.
I tumble backward.
My head crashes on the ground and I find myself staring at the lights above me.
I’m exhausted and I take the moment to try and work out what to do next.
My chest rises and falls with a heavy depth.
And my lungs, they struggle.
And my heart, it races.
I don’t move.
My eyes start to burn.
The adrenaline exits my body but leaves me shaking on the floor.
And I sob.
I let it out.
Years of anger and frustration and whatever else I’ve kept bottled up within me, I let it out.
I think of Franklin. My parents. Alicia. Loneliness.
My thoughts race through my mind as I explore everything that I’ve gone through and everything that it has left me with.
And in the end I’m left with the realization that I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
I don’t know much of anything.
My head hurts.
I see Dylan getting up off the ground.
Brushing himself off.
He looks confused and he looks angry.
I tell him to leave and give me a moment with Evaline.
Then as he exits, Evaline crouches down next to me.
I see my memory of her flicker in and out.
And Evaline, the real one, the love of my life, she tells me that we have to talk.
We walk at a slow pace.
We walk as if we have all the time in the world.
And while we may have one day had time; this is no longer true.
There is an end date.
There is an end date and it causes everything else to feel that much more compressed. It causes everything else to feel that much more real.
The sun is shining.
It’s fall.
The leaves are falling.
We hold hands.
I feel her loose skin as our fingers tangle up.
This moment, it will have an end, just like everything else.
She looks at me with a smile.
‘This is nice.’
And I find myself nodding in agreement. Because it’s true. I took things like this for granted in the past.
We spend the next few minutes in silence before I open my mouth.
‘You know, Franklin almost had me convinced that you had joined some sort of southern death cult.’
I laugh as I say this.
She smiles.
‘Why southern?’
‘You know…I have no clue.’
My thoughts wander as we meander with a cadence that reflects our conversation.
Finally we start to slow.
I can see that she’s in pain.
Her eyes are at a squint and she’s becoming weak.
We sit down at a park bench.
She leans her head against my shoulder.
We take in the moment. We let ourselves breathe.
