The Silhouette of Grief: A Short Story

I awoke to the sound of birds singing melodies behind my window. I opened my eyes to find the sun peeking through my window beyond the blend of baby blue and cotton white in the sky. The branches around my window slightly swayed with the mellow breeze. I smiled at the thought of the scent of clean cut grass and spring dew. Then I remembered: today wasn’t a beautiful day. It wouldn’t be a beautiful day. I shut my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, hoping that maybe today my heart would ache a little less. But when I opened my eyes, my bedroom seemed darker. The sun was a pale yellow and the sky seemed washed of its color. The clouds seemed hazy and transparent and the trees were a dull, bare brown. It had been six months since he’d left. He was the man I was in love with; the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. He didn’t know that. My phone vibrated on the side table to my left. I rolled over and glanced at the screen. It was 9:00a.m. Too early to deal with the world and the reality of my heartbreak. My phone buzzed again and my best friend’s name lit up the screen. Brunch in an hour?, the text read. I didn’t respond. Instead, I rolled over and pretended I hadn’t seen.

It was 11:00a.m. when I dragged myself out of bed. I glanced in the mirror and bluntly thought, this is why he left me. I brushed my teeth and washed my face but couldn’t bring myself to put on makeup. He liked when I wore black eyeliner. I hesitated, then proceeded into the bedroom. I slipped on a black t-shirt dress and flip flops, grabbed my purse and headed to the car. The familiar road seemed particularly hopeful that day. My playlist rummaged through somber songs while the sunshine reflected on my windows and the blue water surrounding me twinkled. I parked my car at the town dock, facing the rippling waves. I pushed my chair back, rolled down the windows exactly half way, turned up the volume of my music, and grabbed my pad of paper and pen.

The letters seemed to flow right out of me that day, my pain being formed into words and versus. Poem after poem, I wrote about everything I thought I knew: his sparkling chocolate-colored eyes, his strong yet delicate hands, his seemingly benevolent heart. As each page turned, a small piece of my heart was glued back into place. Although the pain subsided, the heaviness didn’t. At 4:00p.m., my mind was empty and I sat staring at the view in front of me. I lightly sketched the trees and the park benches, the birds and the clouds. Soon enough, nightfall began to creep in with slow, somber steps. First, it dimmed the sky’s brightness, then covered the clouds with brushstrokes of golden yellow, fiery orange and ruby red. It saturated the sky with swirls of violets and plums and, like stained glass, the peacefulness shattered and the beauty of it all left me empty. As I drove down the winding path back home, emptiness filled me; it filled me the way emptiness can, with vacancy and abandonment, alone and in the dark. The heaviness sunk into me and weight pressed on my chest. Oxygen suddenly seemed scarce and I began to sink in my thoughts, pulling me down, down like an anchor in the sea. My legs could barely hold me up as I stepped into my bedroom. I numbly slipped out of my clothes, put on shorts and a tank top, and crawled under my sheets. Tears fell from my unvarnished eyes as I reflected on how days without him felt, and I shuddered in my pain until my body languished from exhaustion.