After You

Long ago, someone had told me, that if you have to gift someone something, gift them colours. So that when they are having a day bereft of colours, they can borrow some from your palette and paint their world again. 

It's been a couple of years since your accident and I still don't understand how those paints in your dried out acrylic tubes will help me paint a masterpiece that defines the hollow pain that your loss left inside of me. My days aren't grey, my dear. They are blank. I don't remember what I had for breakfast today; or even if I did have breakfast or not, but I clearly remember the crunch of glass under my feet as I walked over to your body that lay on the cold concrete on that winter morning, bewildered as to why did you look so calm when there was chaos all around? 

But let's not talk about death; for I'm guessing you're used to it now. Let's talk about life, and especially life without you. I know you'd think that I'll say that the sun shines dimmer or the birds chirp less or that the flowers seem to droop nowadays, but I was surprised to notice that all of these make no change to their colour or shine or whatsoever. The cornflakes crunch the same. The wind chimes jingle the same. The postman arrives the same. But nowadays, he doesn't get impatient when I slowly open the door after 3 rings, hungover from the night before. 

Even your workplace hasn't changed.

I don't touch it; it's exactly how you left it, hurriedly, the palette at an angle that would give you an OCD if you saw it right now. You loved potato chips. The half-eaten packet of crisps still lie on top of the table amongst the beer bottles we chugged down the night before. I loved potato chips too. Now I can't have them. They remind me how you used to make me go out in the middle of the night for your strange cravings. 

The paintbrushes stand awaiting your touch, dried with stains of red from the sunset you were painting. The painting stands incomplete, craving your touch as I do. There is a strange sensation in my stomach when I look at it. I touch the paintbrushes just to feel a hint of your presence.

I remember how you'd talk to animals and they seemed to understand your vibe. They loved you. I loved you. I love you. I go back to when we first met, how you had walked into the party at my friend's friend's place and went straight to the aquarium and said, 'It's nice to meet you Mr. Fish!'; I've never told you, but you had my heart then and there. You had a composition of colours on then, your smile making dents that made my heart flutter away. 

I look at the crayons you gifted to me in a cigarette box on a very ordinary day and wonder if you do such crazy acts of love even in the world above. I think of how you'd asked me if I could lend you a thousand dollars on the night I had asked you to marry me. You said I needed to bribe you to marry me. I remember your laugh that resonated in my heart forever. 

You've left me with a thousand memories, a million thoughts, innumerable kisses, and an infinity of love; love that consumed me. 

But when you left me without a single goodbye, I guessed that's how this worked. Your colours aren't contrasting to my black and whites anymore. You live among your masterpieces now, and I survive by holding on to them, but you've been the greatest masterpiece of them all. 

P. S. Save a seat for me up there, aye capt'n?