Loss

In the moments between unconscious sleep and the first fleeting thoughts of an awakened mind, where dreams and truth slip and twist around one another, a lonely feeling haunts me.

It's always the same hollow, the deep black of a hurt that will never be resolved, never entirely heal. My friend is gone. She's gone and gone and gone forever.

Seven months have passed, but the same emptiness swallows my mind as those first waking thoughts remind me what's missing. She's looking at me, big brown eyes full of love and devotion, and a companionship complete and whole, without one word ever spoken. She knows I love her too and she sits comfortably beside me, but deep down, my conscious mind knows she's leaving. There's no warm brown fur under my stroking fingers, and there'll be no small friend in the bed beside me, nose pressed against my cheek to wake me, ready for our next adventure.

Then my mind plays the meanest trick of all. It's a twisted thing it's always done, especially in social settings where I should be particularly appropriate or well-behaved: it shows me the most horrific thing it can muster. In this case, it's my friend, fur rotted, or mostly so, in a shallow grave in my mother's garden, the elements of the last seven months having decomposed my darling into a horror beyond recognition. Sometimes an active imagination is not a blessing.

That thought passes, too, and as my mind drifts and eases towards those last few seconds of semi-consciousness, the hollowness returns. I'm close enough now to reality to shake my brain awake, grasping at the morning light and holding Liam close, a warm, safe balm against my chest. The dark feeling is fading and my rational mind is able to talk itself calm again, but there's a desperation tucked deeply away from the cool light of day and I know it's permanently a part of me, just like she is.