This is how it would be between us.
On the day of our parting, I would think very little of it. I would wait with you for the boarding announcement of your flight. It won’t matter that it has been held up for three hours. It won’t matter because the airport terminal would revolve around us.
I’ll mock the airline and give you ten silly reasons why I’d rather walk than sit 30,000 feet up in a white and orange contraption. I’ll mock the colour of your box as you wheel away into the back of the boarding queue and then I’ll shout, “One day, I’ll come find you”.
Our ceaseless back and forth, the joy of my every day, would attenuate. One day, I’ll get a picture message from you. While I wait for it to download, I will wonder at what kind of ridiculousness you could possibly have found on the internet from your habitual scouring of it. The image would clear up to reveal a wedding invite. It will be yours.
“You finally deceived someone into marrying you”, I will remark with a coy-face emoji and wait for your signature, “Hehehehe” reply.
One regular night, I’ll come up with the funniest ‘The Simpsons’ joke and pick up my phone to tell it to you. I’ll fight the urge to call a married woman up at 9:49 pm. I will prevail against this urge.
On an afternoon in August, my family would run into yours. My daughter would have your name, but your son won’t have mine. I’ll steal two glances as you walk away, hoping you would do the same. You won’t.
One evening, you’ll come online to find R.I.P. next to my name. You will hurriedly open my page. You will find more of those. My funeral service would miss you, but not the interment. You will honour a decade-long promise, to be at the laying down of whichever one of us leaves here first. When you throw your handful of earth, you’ll realise that being there matters, but only to you, for I won’t know it.
On a day, almost like any other, you’ll finally be too lazy to breathe, and then the end will come.
In the end, there will be no end. Life and love would continue, just not ours. And the marks that the love we shared would wait for the sands of time to erase them.
