The Prince's Temporary Wife

It Starts With The End

The rain was pouring down, the sky gray. I loved it, I hated it. All the weather meant for me was that it mourned my mother.

The still, pale, cold body suffocated inside the white coffin that descended down...down...down to the depths of the earth.

She was of color to me, but to them, she's as dark as the crying clouds above. The speaker played her song. The song we always sang in the road, on family nights, on special occasions, on birthdays.

Birthdays.

The word inside my head bitter and sour.

She doesn't even get the chance to have her 78th birthday. She doesn't even get to watch me parade in front of the crowd, the emblem of medicine bright and glowing on my chest. I hated it.

I clawed for invisible hands that would reach out and flung the coffin cover off. I struggled to grasp every last physical piece of her. I devoured the words of the song, her voice singing instead of the singer's. Reflected in my eyes was the face I wouldn't see again. The skin that longed for the breathing, warm skin of a mother.
The smell that was dragged along with her under, never to be smelled again, was slowly dissipating. Her entire being swallowed and gone.

I looked through blurry lenses of my cornea, the scenario as visible as it could be. Nothing could separate me from my mother. I would even go with her to her grave.

My brother was still, frozen, his tears dripping in large amounts and volume of water.

But nothing could compare to mine.

Anger runs through me, the boiling red cell filled with haemoglobin sped up.
I shook him.

More...more...fiercer...wilder...

I wanted him to help me haul my mother up, into the world of the living again. I wanted him to accomplice me in bringing her to life again. But he wouldn't budge. He remained, his face pulled down, just how gravity keeps us standing, connected to the earth.

At least, that existed.

The only connection I had with my mother was the earth-wire. The ground. The soil. The stones. At least with that, she was beating. Alive. Pulsing.

But I wanted her here, beside me.

I wanted my family complete.

I thrashed at the hands that held me back. The arms digging into my skin, touching my bones.

My brother's arm.

He held me back.

"Traitor!" I screamed, the hoarse banshee scream I always let out when I'm past my range of vocalization.

"Come on, Kaye," he taunted, "Let her go."

Let her go...

He knew I'm a person that wouldn't let go that easy. If I wanted something, I would always have it. No matter the way, no matter the cost.

"Shut up! She's still alive!"

Whatever he said, I insisted.

I want my mother. I want her here.

My aunt interrupted.

"She's dead."

Death. How cruel. I was motionless on my brother's side, his arm around my shoulders, never letting loose, thinking I would jump into the abyss below. I was speechless as I watched cement after soil, stone after soil descend with her.

I was still replaying what happened until...

No...always.

It was a cinema, only that it doesn't end. And the people watching it never goes out into the night to catch a late reserved dinner at a high-end restaurant.

They stayed. I stayed. I didn't have any dinner to catch. I didn't have any date. I only had time. I only had the scene in front of me. The silence of the room and darkness that clouded in. I only had them, and my brother that embraced me quietly. The ghost of our mother's warmth keeping us blinded to the film that showed the cruel truth.

I hated how my life was.

But nonetheless, people die.

Everything has an ending.

There's no forever.

No matter how much you love that person, you can't ever stay.

You always have to leave.