you're alive

i close my eyes and i find myself on the sofa, next to hospital bed number 32. sitting there, looking at you, everything else had stopped. this moment was it. a moment that breaks me apart 5 times each second. i am so tied up, a million thoughts rush through my head, what do i do? what do i say? do i pray? but i fail to comprehend a single thought.

all i hear in that deadly silence is, ‘this could be it’.

my eyes glisten as i hold back my tears, my jugular vein throbs, my heart pounds so much so that my ribcage slowly scatters away like ashes in air. and your last words to me, ‘meri jaan, look at what they’ve done to me’, go around in my head in a loop, again and again. to this day, the ache in your voice is fresh as a martyrs blood.

i came home that day and went straight to the prayer mat and cried for hours, ‘Lord please get her out of this mess.’

two weeks later, on the same prayer mat, i heard a knock, and with the knock came the words i feared hearing, ‘she passed away, shehzeen’.

‘meri jaan, look at what they’ve done to me’ plays in my head, again. it became a constant reminder of your pain, your suffering, your ache, your turmoil. a constant reminder of what you went through, when you were taking your last breaths.

you did go, but what am i supposed to do? with all those constant reminders, how am i supposed to make peace with the fact that you left? how am i supposed to be okay when i go to your room, and your welcoming smile is not there?

and i do try to accept all of it and move on, but the constant reminder comes back, ‘meri jaan, look at what they have done to me’.

i am naniami, i am still there, next to your bed, looking at what they have done to you. and i can not fathom moving on from it. i just can't move on, but what is moving on anyways?

so tell me, what is moving on anyways?

to this day, my breath hitches every time your name comes up. i’m paralysed for a moment. i don’t know how to act. for a moment there, i’m not even human. nothing but flesh and bones. just a skeletal structure that fades away a little with the smallest mention of you.

i wonder, why i ever got so close to you. why i ever let you have a significant role in my life, why i ever gave you the place that you still inhabit? shouldn’t i have moved on from you now? shouldn’t your memories fade away with the structure too? but the thought of your memories fading away is suffocating, the walls cave in on me every minute that i realise that i am running out of ways to keep you alive.

sometimes, it’s calming to hear your voice at the back of my mind - when i’m not trying to seize it, when i’m not trying to runaway from it - it makes me believe that maybe you’re alive. even if you’re only alive in my head, the thought is soothing.

i look at your door for hours waiting for you to step out, i now have the carving of the door memorised, i can tell how far apart the flowers are, the ombre’s of the wood, the different tools and skills that went into the shaping of that door, even though i look at it from an appalling distance because the closer i get to that door, the closer i get to reality. the closer i have to get to stop forgetting the fact that you’re gone.

gone forever.

believe me or not, even after a year and 2 months, i still make a mental note to myself to call you and talk to you, only to realise that this note will also go in the pile of things i can not do anymore. things that are not possible, anymore.

and once again i’m pulled back to bed number 32 and the words go around in my head, ‘meri jaan look at what they’ve done to me’.