I looked to the alarm clock with pleading eyes; wishing time hadn’t gone so fast. I wished time would freeze and stay frozen for another day, because I needed one more day to be with you. Yet, the more I pondered about the wish, the more I knew I’d be making more like it. I also knew that I had to let you go, as Mama had done to Daddy. I just didn’t want my heart to break as Mama’s did.
I turned clandestinely in your arms and brushed my lips to yours. After pressing my forehead to yours, tears flooded my eyes. Inaudibly I had begun to fall apart, my heart disintegrating until a futile ruin. With one eye, I could see the sun prevue along the horizon and deriding me with despondency. With the other eye, laid obscurity and withering elation, contentment and no inkling for tomorrow. That is, until I felt your lips on my forehead, kissing me as if I was a child.
You straightened my gaze to your beaming face, lips touching lips a little longer than usual, before placing my forehead against yours again. “There is no need for this now, not until I’m out of your sight,” you tell me, with a hand cupping my face. “So let’s make the best out of what time we have left.” With that said you unhurriedly crept away from under the covers and made your way to your dresser. Though silence filled the room, as I watched you stray away, the rupture of a juvenile bride’s heart pierced my ears.
By the time the sun was perceptible for all to see, we both were dressed and I sat at the dining room table; nursing a cup of tea I had yet to drink. Rigidity-filled silence surrounded me that morning.
Yet, you came in smiling your handsome smile but paused by the fridge for a moment. I can only imagine now that you hesitated only to take in the sight of me, in. Taking in how I looked as sunlight glimmered in from the window behind me, proving to you my puerile innocence. I looked to be nothing but a novice from afar, complete with unfledged features.
How time flew that morning because it felt like only minutes before we were saying our valedictions to each other. Only this time, I placed myself in my mother’s shoes; when she was saying she was saying her goodbyes to her military husband.
(All I know of my father is that he was in the Navy, when 9/11 happened; and I was his little girl. I know nothing more than that; I know nothing of what he looked like even. Yet, I knew, then, that he was never coming back. Somehow, subconsciously in my five- year-old mind, I knew.)
Kissing my forehead one final time, “I love you, Jessie,” you whispered, resting your forehead against mine. You placed a hand the small bump I bared, and gave a smile, soon after. Our first child, but you feared you’d never see it and it would have to grow without you.
“I wish for a girl, so you won’t have difficulty raising it.”
I gave a smile back, slightly laughing through the pain. “I wish for twin boys. Each one will be named after a family member who fought, or is fighting, for a brighter future for them.”
I watched as you ebbed into the horizon, but no tears fell as I did. The wind blew passionately at my hair, its hushed voice singing in my ear. I looked the sky, letting the chirruping of the birds and the whistling of the wind; breathe a consciousness of serenity into me. As I close my eyes against the gentle rays of the sun, tendrils of it engulfing me, “He’ll come home. Daddy won’t let you go through what Mama did.”
I woke from my dream-like fixation glossy eyed and my heart was pounding harder than it ever has before. The annihilating sensation devoured every cell of me, making my breath labored in my constricted throat. The feeling of dereliction washed over me, but my mind was too frail to fight it. Falling victim to it and fighting back with all my mental strength, it was forcing me to surrender to its superior power. Was this how Mama felt when Daddy went away? Tears filled my brown eyes, but the psychological warfare continued.
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The battle went on for months after you left, but I fought it head on with vicious tenacity. Corruption was its plan for victory, hoping to weaken my psyche and spiritual wellbeing. I fell vulnerable instantly and was at the brink of giving up near the end of it. Spending long nights unable to sleep, and days of gray on the sunniest day I’ve ever seen, I could feel it burrowing deeper by the moment. However, it wasn’t until our roommates arrived that I was able to win the fight.
Although your wish came true for a girl, my wish for twins came partially true. Francisco Antonio and Amelia Luisa, both born healthy little miracles, were my keys to success. My unconscious doubt of you coming home, I realized, gradually disappeared, as I held the both of them in my arms. Amelia has your eyes; Frankie has that urge to make me smile as you do. All I have to do is hold them, see them, acknowledge their existence, to overcome that hurdle. It’s with them that I am surer that you’re alive, because through them, you never left me at all. That your soul lives and breathes in their tiny bodies, creating that phantom of you I missed so much. It is with our children too, that I can wait until you come home and when you do, I’ll never cry again. I promise.