Dim lights lined the dusty hallway, a long, quiet hallway which led to that wooden door. He knew it well; he had spent the afternoon kneeling before it, tracing over the panels with his fingertips, learning every spot. He had smelt the polish, almost faded away now, and rested his cheek against the mahogany. And when he had strength, he had stood with the door inside him, and gone to his room.
Inside his suitcase, a bargain sale at the second hand store, he had thrown those off-white shirts, with sweat stains and coffee stains and a who-knows stain, the scratchy coarse trousers which she had always complained about, two leather belts; cheap, fake and one pair of expensive crocodile skin boots. He didn’t need to struggle with the zipper. He didn’t need to push, to get everything in all at once. All his possessions had been burned up. It zipped up easily, a metallic screech and slide, and then the room was stripped of all personality. He had never had posters, photos. He had one photo, but that was burned too.
And then he left the room, and had stood in the hallway, and cried. He cried for a long, long time. In this Victorian house he shared with four others, he had lived, loved, died, rose again, and then died once more. He had no more money, for the strain had taken its toll. He left, today, for a refuge somewhere on the other side of the city. He would not look at that room before he left, he said. He would not smell her ashes in the stagnant stink of death that still lingered on the blanket. And he kept his word; he did not. Instead, he merely cried in the hallway, and looked at her door.
He clutched his suitcase so tightly his hands started to ache, and he ground his teeth, and he hurt, and still he did nothing but stand completely still, and cry. Tear tracks floated like forgotten dreams down his cheeks, forgotten dreams and ended possibilities. For in the refuge he left for lay only shared dorms, and crappy meals, and fluorescent lights. In here, he saw colour and complexity and her.
But he found it was as easy as taking one step forward. He had stood, breaking for so long, that now his shattered heels and heart beat in tandem, and he walked. He walked through the kitchen, where Jen and Martha and Bill and Adam congregated, like spectators at a funeral who barely knew the deceased. And they didn’t know him, not at all, but he walked like the living dead, and ghosted silently across the linomen. They watched him go, and never said a word. They knew there was nothing to say.
He kept going. He barely remembered opening that final door, but suddenly, he felt the night air cool across his cheeks. His last remaining tears dried there and then, underneath the moon. He looked up, suddenly. And there, he saw stars, and he didn’t cry, because he knew she was one of them. And he knew, he would join her soon enough. For now, he walked, and walked, and lived for she who could not.
