One-Hundred Days

"Do you remember sorrow?"

I look up to find you sitting right in front of me, a look on your face that I haven't seen in two years. It's that look where your eyes are wide and dark, and the tears are almost visible, dancing along the brims of your eyelids.

"What do you mean?"

You close your eyes to block the tears before moving away from me. I watch as you lean against the wall, take a breath. I can see you pressing back the memories from reaching the front of your mind.

"Sorrow, do you remember how it felt when it happened? When you last felt it, how long ago was it?"

I look down and close my own eyes to remember.

"I don't even know."

The silence pieced together by my whisper collapses onto us, as I lie on my stomach and you lean against the wall and we both close our eyes in desperate attempts to block out memories that bring that feeling of our throat being closed and dry and our eyes stinging like they're on fire. These memories have not wrapped themselves around our necks in years too lengthy for us to remember.

"I don't remember it either, and it scares me. I know I shouldn't really miss such a thing as sorrow, but it scares me that all of the memories I have containing it are almost gone. They're not the same."

"Well, wouldn't that be a good thing?" You stare at me and shake your head.

"You would think it would be, wouldn't you? But, even though those memories are terrible to have, terrible things to have gone through, they're me. They're my life, and I can't ever change that, and having them go away, and not being able to get them back completely no matter how hard I try, it scares me. It makes me think that I'm slowly losing myself to everything around me."

I sit up and crawl across the bed to you. You bring your eyes up to meet mine and I shake my head, knowing you can read the words hidden behind my eyes. You and I are cliche in this way, but it works more than anyone could ever know.

"No, no, love, you're not losing yourself at all." You shake your head in my chest as I speak. I can feel your breathing become hitched as you try to keep the tears back. You think you're losing yourself, and I know you can feel yourself seep into the concrete you lay on in the dead of the humid summer nights that plague this town.
"You're not losing yourself by losing sorrow. I can't remember it either, and so many people try to block sorrow from their lives, but you and I, we can let it go by ourselves. We're the lucky ones, the ones people dream of being. You're never going to lose yourself to the world, never, you are too much of yourself for that to ever happen."

You bury your head further into my chest and cry. I bring my arms around you as you give up on keeping yourself steady and calm.

We sit there for hours, and eventually you stop crying, but you never stop shaking. You shake like you did in the middle of the winter, when you and I were stuck inside of the snow, and we felt the cold take over us. You shake like you did then, and it turns my skin numb.
We sit there for hours, as you shake off the feeling of falling to pieces.
You pull your face from my chest to have your eyes to meet mine.

"I can feel it now, the sorrow." I lose my smile to your words.

"How does it feel?" You pause, before looking across the bedroom out of the window.

You turn to me with a smile spread across your face, the most beautiful one I've seen in years.

"It feels amazing."