Two Sides of Broken (Darkness): Her Horcrux

 

You said you are leaving, that you can’t be with me anymore, why then do you slip into my dreams, lay your head on my thighs and cry…

If you are so happy now, why do you come to me in my sleep and look at me with those sad eyes that make me take your hand, drawing you close to me as you lay your head on my thighs and cry…

We say nothing, do nothing as you lay your head on my thighs and cry…

Your heart cries out to me, I tell those around me about it but they only say I am being silly; you had moved on and had no plans of coming back…

They were wrong. You come back every night to haunt me. Why was I paying for your own sins? Why won’t you release me? Why do you just lay your head on my thighs and cry…

I want to reach out like I have always done for you in your darkest hour.

No One understands the demons you fight every night, muttering feverishly in your sleep. The fear in your eyes as you stand rooted to the spot when the harsh reality of life’s headlights flash upon you.

No One understands the underdog in you better than I do. Countless times you have laid your head on my thighs and cried and I have cried with you.

I have nurtured you. I have loved you. I have played a part in the makings of the man you are now by giving all my pride, confidence and blessings to you.

I cried to God day and night, daring Him, forcing Him to take all of my Rhema, all of my good fortune and bestow it upon you; to take all of my beauty in exchange for your ashes.

I took upon myself your ill-fate just to put that chip upon your shoulder and that smile in your belly. After all, were we not going to end up together? Were you not going to be the head of the roof we would share? All i had given you was still going to be ours — our very own symbiotic relationship — you cannot give too much of yourself to the one you love that you lose yourself completely, right?… or so i thought.

You had all that, you took all that — all the running and crying to me and I in turn running and crying to my Maker or who ever, with tongues and aggrieved groaning –on your behalf.

I had dreamed dreams. The mother who suckled me had seen paths. From my lips, you heard about the great fortune that awaited you in the not too distant future. The smile these prophecies put on your face made me go back countless times to wrestle for your life and lift yokes off your shoulders.

At night I was the one your demons came to, I fought them fearlessly for love, I conquered them. You saw me in your dreams countless times, fighting your battles and when the last of them was won, you left.

I couldn’t understand this person you had become, this person who was suddenly strong enough to fly without me, this Icarus whose wings didn’t burn even when he soared above the sun.. above his sun… this person who once called me his Sun whenever he laid his head on my thighs and cried.

And it dawned on me, this was no symbiosis. This parasitic relationship had crept up on me and destroyed my core. It had fed on my love, paralysing the sensible cells as it fattened itself, leaving in its wake a shriveled, hollowed out ghoul and a jaded soul.  

You were healthy, happy, confident, proud, successful… and you did not look at me with the same eyes you used to. You scorned my thighs and raised your head at me.

Your tears no longer fell before me. I watched and listened as you described to me that epitome of beauty, peace and love that had captured the man I made you, the wreck i patched up. The light in your eyes as you crowed in adulation about her; every cold calculated word was a leaden dart to my already mummified being.

I seized to exist in the chapters of your book. You said I no longer gave you the happiness and peace you required, the type you were looking for now. I couldn’t fill the new role you had scripted into your macabre dance of love.

You walked away and took my existence with you… What else was left?

In my flight of fancy, I had given it all. I could only watch as you bulldozed the home we built.  Picking up every bit of good will and fortune — the patches, the lessons, the secrets — you burnt the memories.

Memories of me you rubbished and said to all who cared to listen that i wasn’t good enough, I made you unhappy and restless. It was all my fault and you were only doing what was right, and they agreed.

Then you left to set up house with that being who all of a sudden best suits the man you had become.

Still you won’t be appeased. For whatever perceived wrong you believe i did you, you punish me. You haunt me. You take away the only succour I find in the eight hours of death Osalobua grants me; the only respite this spineless broken soul can afford for now. You still slip into my dreams, lay your head on my thighs and cry…

…. and the pain trapped in moist little pellets, rolling down and through the lines on my face akin to the ruts and trenches of a weather-beaten path — paving way for new ones — I STILL cry with you.