"It's always been that way, it seems

One love begins, one comes undone"

✦

What would happen if I were to die?

Would Matt care? Or would he be relieved—to be a widow rather than a divorcee?

Maybe not. If he were a widow, people would pity him and assume he carried this weight. The weight of stolen love. The weight I carried. He would never carry it and he was never one for pity.

Matt would much rather just divorce me. Not because I would still be alive.

I wonder how often he thought about divorce. About the final push to shed his skin completely of me like I didn't exist.

But I did. I did exist. I was only a burden though. Everyday I faded further into his past, but I couldn't completely disappear, not yet. I'd still be papers to file and memories to vigorously scrub at with an eraser till all there was left of me was a pile of rubber bits he could blow away or vacuum or trash.

What would happened if I were to die? Outside of Matt being a widow.

Would he plan a funeral? He's the only possible candidate for who would, but would he?

I think if I died I wouldn't have a funeral planned in my honor. Maybe that's not such a bad thing. No one likes funerals, especially for people they didn't care about. And I had no one to come to my own. No one who cared. No one to be sad. That's not such a bad thing.

I looked from the bath tub to the shower rod to the medicine cabinet filled with aspirin. I wish I could wonder what would happen if I were to die.

Knowing the outcome of your own death isn't comforting, not when the outcome is less than bleak. You would think it would make it easier to go to not have to question everyone's feelings, but that curiosity only gives you another reason to stay. I don't think I had any reasons to stay anymore.

That could've made me reckless and do as I please with no account of anyone's feelings. It could've really, but it didn't. It just emptied me. It drained me. It made me hollow, like a figure just purely made out of paper thin skin.

I would be content to not speak another word and just be. The problem was that I had no reason to just be. Stay or go, there'd be no difference either way.

Where do you go when all you are is just being anyways? Stay or go? Go.

I turned around, not shutting off the light to the bathroom as I left.

It was cold out and I was shivering because my jacket was too thin to coincide with the sinking temperature but I didn't care. I was only paper thin skin anyways; I'd always be cold.

Empty and cold. There's nothing to absorb heat or sound. Just paper thin skin to encapsulate the empty and cold.

I walked to the cemetery. A short metal wire fence surrounded the patch of dead grass and unkempt gravestones. It was ugly here. Grey. But could cemeteries ever really be pretty? This one was just especially hideous.

I passed by an elderly lady on a bench as I entered who smiled at me. It wasn't much of a smile. It looked as someone grabbed a hold of her sagging cheeks and mushed it up against the rest of her wrinkled, sun-spotted face. She looked kind of empty too.

She waved at me. It was then I realized I had stopped moving once I saw her. I hadn't blinked either.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was frail and in the wrong setting slightly disturbing.

Hi, I'm paper thin skin. They say the body is 60% water but not mine, mines all air. "Hello."

She patted the space next to her so I sat down and the rotting wood shuddered. We both stared into the rows of stones instead of each other.

"Who'd you lose?" She asked, turning her body towards me.

I stayed still. "No one." Every time we spoke, a pocket of condensation clouded the air.

"Then why are you here?" She followed up, confused as to why any un-losing person would visit a graveyard.

"Who'd you lose?" I countered.

"My wife." I bet she held a funeral for her.

"Did you have a funeral?" Of course she did.

"Yes," she confirmed, stating it like it was obvious, because it was.

I finally looked back at her. Her eyes were dull and bogged down by purple drooping eyelids beneath them. Her irises were green, but not like Harry's. A brown was smudged into the green that mimicked the dry grass under us. Harry's green was a kaleidoscope of shades. A firework explosion of limes and olives and jades; his held a spectrum of tones, but they were cohesive in their range. Her's were different, they weren't pretty.

"I'm sorry." I was sorry. Loss was inexplicably hard to deal with. So screw Harry and his you did nothing wrong nonsense.

"One of us had to go first. I suppose I just wish it could've been me." Plain and honest.

I wasn't sure what to say so I opted to say nothing at all.

"You're engaged?" She tapped the ring.

I covered my left hand with the right one. "Married," I corrected.

She pouted her lips and nodded with closed eyes. "Love... is special. It's only given to certain people, the real kind."

"The real kind?"

"The kind that lasts. I hope yours lasts." Her cheeks were squished up again, the thin line of her crinkled lips wavering.

It didn't, I wanted to confide in this random stranger. Instead I confessed, "I used to be close to my grandmother. My abuelita."

I paused. "You remind me of her," I admitted, not needing to know her for more than a couple minutes to decide so.

Rocking forward and back, I pulled my coat tighter around my body but it didn't help.

"Thank you."

I shrugged even though it was indeed a compliment. "She used to tell me that all she wanted was to be there when I got married because she wanted to see me with someone who loved me as much as she did." I got a little choked up by then end but I swallowed the shakiness and let it fall to my feet.

"Was she there?"

"No," I deadpanned. "She died a while ago, a bit before the wedding. She was actually the only person in my family who liked my husband." She knew how much he loved me. I bet she'd be able to tell me exactly why he stopped.

The lady pulled me into her side and I complied, letting my head fall onto her shoulder and into the crook of her neck. She stroked my hair and tucked it behind my ear with her slender fingers. Goosebumps fled my arms.

"Is she here?" Her voice was still wobbly, but more delicate like her tongue was a rose petal.

"She was cremated. Poured into the Atlantic so she could be with her husband again." I sucked in a breath, biting my lip to keep it inside, my chest puffed out slightly.

She rubbed her hand up and down my upper arm. "You're strong."

"Not really. Everyone experiences death," I disagreed. I wasn't strong, if I was, Matt would still love me.

"Not in the same way. You wouldn't be here if they did." She went back to petting my hair.

I sighed. I wish I could wonder what would happen if I were to die.

We were both rattling as the wind blew threw our paper thin skin. She was empty and I was too and I'm sure she knew it.

I thought about Harry as she held me against her. She wasn't warm like him because she couldn't be, just like I couldn't be. Harry's eminent heat was encased by every working organ and tendon and muscle and bone and vein. His skin compacted his everything, not his nothing.

We were quiet for a while, burning the yard into our memories as if we hadn't been here a thousand times before.

"I painted on my floor." I did it without a second thought, I think it was the first time insanity really struck me.

She should've judged me but she didn't. "Are you a painter?"

I wasn't and never really had been. There's a difference between painting in your free time and being a painter. "No."

"Okay. Why'd you have paint then?"

"I used to paint."

"Why'd you stop?"

She asked me a lot of questions. I didn't mind Harry's inquisition, but her's I'm not so sure about.

"Someone died." I think she asked so many questions because my answers were so bland.

"Your abuela?"

"No. Someone else."

Her chin ruffled my hair as she nodded in understanding. "Are they here?"

Yes. Yes they were. "Maybe."

"Let's go check, hm?" She proposed.

"I... I don't know." I came here a lot, but to the actual grave, no.

"How about I show you my wife first?" Her whole demeanor lighted up when her wife was brought into conversation.

"Okay."

We stood in unison and strolled over to her love. The stone wasn't far off as the yard was quite small, but it was by the edge next to the forest on the other side. It was a stark contrast: forest and cemetery. Life and death. Growth and decay. It was a fitting place for Leonora Papilio, not for her wife.

We stood before the stone. Her eyes watered up so this time I wrapped my arm around her shoulders.

"She doesn't belong here. She belongs somewhere beautiful. I bet she was."

"That she was," she uttered. "Too pretty... too pretty for me." I barely heard what she said at the end but I caught it and I knew what she meant. How it felt. "But, she would've wanted to be here."

"Why's that?"

"We moved here together in July of 2011. Hit city hall as soon as our marriage was legalized. We loved it here. We loved here."

Our lips were powder blue now, our faces more pale.

"That's beautiful."

"Our life was." She was yet to tear her gaze from her grave, as if her wife would materialize there and if she even glimpsed away she'd miss it. "It's odd how life changes when you lose that person who made you want to live it in the first place."

"It's meaningless," I agreed, adding my own two cents.

"Not entirely. Loving someone and living because of someone isn't the same. It's hard to live without someone you love. It's not impossible."

I couldn't tell if she was empty anymore. Because life without Matt was impossible. What I was experiencing everyday wasn't living, it was just being.

"I think you can love someone and still only find life possible with them."

"I think that mindset can stem from love. But that's not love itself. That's reliance."

I shrugged and stepped away from her. When I glanced over she took a short breath and tugged a salt and pepper strand of hair behind her ear. Clasping her hands tightly, she drew back and gave me a tight lipped cheek squish.

"Well let's go try to find... them?" She encouraged.

I looked to the stone and then to her. "Okay."

Neither of us moved for a moment. Her waiting, me gathering courage.

We began walking slowly and tepidly, her mimicking my pace, but in a direct path I knew but never traveled. I halted when it was a few stones away. Leonora Papilio.

The woman grasped my hand in hers. Her ring was lukewarm, not an ice cube harboring the freezing air.

"C'mon let's keep going," she ushered. It sounded sincere, though I wasn't sure if the rush was because she had more things to do than pressure a stranger into seeing a grave she's been avoiding since it was dug.

"I don't want to," I stated.

"Why not?"

I wasn't surprised she asked that. "Because I don't want to."

I haven't seen her in seven years, why would I want to today? I ripped my hand out of hers and shoved it into my pocket.

"Okay, well I've got to go," she said hesitantly so I nodded my head harshly.

"Okay," I clipped. I wasn't mad but I came off as very agitated.

When she was graves deep into escaping the cemetery, I called out to her, "I'm sorry!"

She turned her head, mushed cheeks and squinted mossy mud eyes. Then she left. I didn't.

Leonora Papilio, Leonora Papilio, Leonora Papilio.

Every step closer was a step further into the wetlands. Starving, sharp-teethed minnows. Blood thirsty, diseased mosquitos nipping off any visible shred of skin. Slush sludge and long, prickly vines clutching ferociously to twisted ankles. Don't go, don't go. Stay where it's safe. Keep drowning.

I was on my knees once I made it, my feet no more useful than an AED for a fast beating heart. Mine was slow now. In these kind of moments it's like you blink in the time your life changes. When it shifts and a new part of yourself is unlocked, good or bad. This felt bad.

Six feet under and six feet before me. Leonora Papilio. A person. A stranger.

I didn't read past the engraving of her name. I sat there but with my back turned to her. This time it was my decision.

My chin was digging into my knees, my arms wrapped around my shins and fingernails unable to strap into any skin at such short lengths. It became night quickly and even if my back was turned to her I found us in the same place. I was in the dark again; her in the unknown.

The moon was particularly dim that night, at least over this short stretch of buried bodies.

I left suddenly and didn't look back. Grass stained knees and dirt splotched boots were the only traces I carried of Leonora Papilio. That was another difference in our actions.

Whether it was a long or short way back I got back to the house in slow motion. Harry was sat on the curb in between our houses when I made it there so I sat beside him. There was that stark contrast again. Life and death. Growth and decay.

"What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for something," he replied.

I nodded, biting my lip, and glanced to my house.

"How are you?"

Grey. "Grey."

Harry must of been made up of colors only butterflies could see. On the surface he may come off as any other bunny teethed boy you've met, but once you get peek at his insides you know he's everything and nothing at the same time because your not developed enough to discern it. You just know it's there.

"How so?"

He'd never know what grey felt like so I didn't try explaining it. "Harry, do you like funerals?"

He pouted his lips and answered with a rising intonation. "Um... I don't particularly look forward to them."

"Would you want one for yourself?" I was sounding creepy and morbid but I think he knew I was only paper thin skin.

"I guess."

"I'd plan your funeral, Harry." I meant it.

"I'd plan your funeral, Evdoxia." I think he meant it too. I didn't mind not wondering what would happen if I were to die anymore.

"Thanks."

He smiled and I smiled too and it wasn't mushy pulled skin, it was natural and normally yellowed teeth.

"What were you doing out here?" Maybe he watched the sunset cause he missed the sunrise.

"Waiting." For what? For who?

"I always do that." I'm alway waiting. Just waiting.

"Stop."

"Hm?"

"Stop waiting," he said. So I would.

⇢ ⇢ ⇢

this was a bit iffy :/ but I like it

it's been two weeks sorryyy

I'm trying my best to post a new

chapter weekly :)

peace out ☺