Waking from a Dying Dawn

I gave up hoping of something better the moment she left. Two of us. That was the pact. Two halves of a whole, one heart beating in tandem, a unity that strengthened our resolve and made us resilient against the world. You will not understand what this means if you haven’t sheltered a moment in our shadow and seen it intertwined along the darkest edge. I never truly knew how feted our air was until all reason for breathing was taken from me. We were … we are the … last.

The inside side of my eyelid is printed with an image I can’t urge my brain to recognise or my words to voice. I think that it might be … no, they won’t come. I wake with beads of sweat staining my sheets and reminding me of the vacuum created by her absence and then when I forget, again, and reach over to lace my fingers with hers I am left wanting. It’s just a cold and wasted space that could be shared – if there was actually anyone else to share it with. Funny thing is that I don’t think I could. It would be a betrayal of what we had. What we were.

I’ve started marking the days by list making. I have always been prone to a list or two and it’s that systematic attention to detail that keeps my busy mind distracted for a moment. Our little Welsh village is luckily in the middle of nowhere and I think that is the reason I am still here. Somehow it protected me from what happened. I am mindful though that it only protected us because I am on day thirty-three and no one else is even hiding in plain sight. I checked the Morgan’s next door and Margret on the end, I made my way to David and Sian’s and then to the Ruth’s and other than adding the monikers of ‘suspect prowler’ and ‘home invader’ to my growing post nominals, each home was as empty as ours now feels. I’ve known these people all of my life, and they me, and yet I found my fingers eager to pry open the smallest box and envelope in the hope of feeling a connection. There is very little of their homes that I haven’t mapped and charted, leaving invisible breadcrumbs to retrace my breach of their privacy, but see this as a way of paying homage rather than an unwarranted incursion. I am memorising ever last drop of their presence here because if I don’t they’ll simply be gone forever.

Dai was one of those stereotypical farmer types who rose at 4am every day and was in bed by 8pm. As rugged as they come he would speak plainly and without nuance so that everyone knew where they stood with him. He would do anything for anyone and did so when he moved out of his parent’s farm to live with Sian in the village. Dai could turn his hand to absolutely anything and was worth his weight in gold. When the skies turned black on that first day he was the one we ran to first.

Their cottage is full of Sian’s joy and optimism and stocked with her newly acquired packing boxes. They are everywhere and fill every corner of every room. She was the heart and soul of our community and would always be involved in one project or another, constantly offering her time and energy to support those who needed it. I completely understood how Dai could have turned his plans inside out to share his life with this woman. Her touches are evident as I move from room to room in search of one last moment of their joy together.

I found it and it broke my heart. I never went back.

I’m sitting on the floor of our living room. The carpets are pretty threadbare now but testify to our lives lived well. The traffic of love, trampled foot after foot across this small space, screams loudly of our presence. We lived – here. My newest ritual is to simply lay my bones down on the floor and run my toes through the woollen fibres of our hearth rug as I recall her Mam’s excitement at finishing this masterpiece and how thrilled she was with our reactions. It is as beautiful today as when she made it those twenty years ago and actually the only thing here that has retained it’s beauty and warmth. Since she left all else feels somehow grey and empty; tarnished and intent on leaching any source of anything real. That is how most days are now. Falling asleep in a room abandoned by most who loved here, and waking to more stillness and absence and loss, with no real sense of what’s happened to us all.

Today I woke with such a compulsion to go to our place that I almost left the house without my shoes on. We had decided early on in our courtship that Coedsant had been where we had first noticed each other. Teenage rebellion oozed from her every pore and was the honey to my pre-pubescent bee. It took an instant for me to realise that we would be together forever which was a remarkable realisation for the shy 12 year old who stepped awkwardly through their life and faulted often. She had been hanging from a branch with her skirt around her head and singing loudly. We returned to that branch whenever life took a turn, to reminded each other of those carefree days. She would try and recreate the moment and I would laugh as we’d fall, limbs entangled, and gasping for breath.

I felt their presence ever before I heard the whimpering. It sent out a slight electric disturbance that fizzled around me and hastened my speed. Having seen no-one in such a long time the thought of ‘touch’ moved my feet with purpose and intent. Believe it or not, since that first day, every single living being had been distinctly absent. Until now … sitting on her branch was an interloper, a creature so devoid of human kindness that I knew she’d sent me.

That night I lay my head on our threadbare carpet with my new companion wrapped securely within our hearth rug. Her little eyes peeking out of the woollen nirvana was enough to keep her grounded, she remained quiet and calm. I’d never had a familiar of any description but the thought of having love in my life again made me pull her in close and whisper words of reassurance. I was a two again with a new pact. She mewed her reassurance back and we slept, we slept so well.

Life changed for us both over the next 12 days or so. We finished our scavenging around the village and filled 2 suitcases with non-perishables. Blankets and water bottles occupied the boot of my hybrid, spilling onto the back seat. No matter how full the car became we were sure to pack the survival equipment Papa B had brought me up with. His stern expression, and untouchable mercurial nature, would greet me at the breakfast table and promise to unsettle my developing emotional capabilities. Embracing my brother and I with bear hugs, that threatened to force his survivalist nature into us, almost always left me near to tears. His sight became quite poor towards his last days, but he was never diminished. I heard that he had been a man of war in his youth and that his eyes were the final call to duty. I have no idea what that has ever meant but it sits with me when I think of him now. His sense of duty was infinite, leaving us both with the skills we needed when he left. I wish that I could thank him for his doggedness, as we close the front door, and choose to move forward instead of staying here and stagnating in our new ‘now’.

The car crawled out of the village with no destination in mind. If the rest of the world reflected our small village existence then we would have no fear of traffic, no worries of speed cameras and no need for money. Lilly sat next to me wrapped in her hearth rug. She had lain claim to the safety it offered her and it was, after her frail body, my most prized village remnant. That is other than Sian’s heart shaped locket that sat against my breast and had nestled there since that day I found their joy. The locket keeps miniature copies of their baby scans and reminds me of the importance to keep going. Lilly and I are none the wiser for why we have been spared or why we have been targeted. How ever you look at it – we are here, we are here now and now is all we have.