Blue

The key hangs from a chain around my neck. I feel the cold metal weight beat against my chest with each step, a syncopated rhythm against the beat of a metronome heart. A feeling of dread has slowly crawled its way up my skin, cold callused fingers reading lines of Braille upon my body, in an attempt to uncover the core of my unease. I try to shake the chill away but the attention breeds only boldness; the coldness slides up the back of my neck and reaches around for my throat.

By the time I reach the last room at the end of the hall, I have become numb to the dread of knowing the answer to my stillborn question. Before I can return to my senses and reason myself out of it, I thrust the key into the lock and open the door. 

It is his room. And yet, there are pieces of her everywhere. The outdated fashion magazines by the bed, the half-empty glass bottles of designer perfumes by the vanity mirror, the crystal wind chime with seashells hanging by the window. It is as if she is still here—as if she has always been here—as if she is still deeply embedded in him. 

I pick up one of the picture frames of him and her by his bed. He looks years younger and so much healthier, with his hair cropped and a boyish smile alit. For the first time since I have known him, I wonder what he was like before the nights of insomnia, before the cigarette habit. His arm is around her slender waist, accentuated by the blue silk sash of her sundress. She has one of those smiles where her eyes smile in crescents, and for the first time I feel a piercing sensation in my gut. 

I walk towards the window, inspecting the trinkets on the window sill. I feel as if I am examining the parts of a euthanized patient, whose flesh is still warm even though the life is fading away. It makes my heart sink to look at these parts—these pieces of a person who is no longer—because they seem to tell me something personal, even though I have no special association whatsoever with the departed. 

It breaks my heart to see this, and I just want to put my head in my hands and cry.