Prologue
For weeks I screamed every night from the pain that was ripping me apart from the inside. Then I stopped.
On the outside, I looked numb. But on the inside, pain was clawing at me and there was no medicine that could help me; each heartbeat was a throbbing ache inside my chest. I got used to it; now it was an integral part of me.
It’s been six weeks since I held them. Six weeks since I smelled them. Six weeks since I heard their laugh. I felt shattered, a part of me died with them that night. Sometimes I heard their voices in my head and I’d frantically look around hoping for one more glimpse, one more laugh.
All around the apartment boxes sat unpacked, although you couldn’t tell whether I was moving in or moving out. Boxes of meaningless items my sister packed in hopes to encourage me to start a new life. I haven’t looked through most of them, they were either things she bought me or gave me. I didn’t want any reminders of the past, everything I loved and possessed burned in the flames on the night of the explosion.
I sat on the windowsill in a new country, a new city, and a new apartment, the pain my only companion. Nothing eased the suffering inside me. I felt agonizing grief within me day and night. It hurt to breathe; I wanted to weep and scream, yet nothing came out.
It'd been so long since I felt anything other than despair. I wasn't even sure if there was hope for anything else but the pain anymore. I wrapped a blanket around me. The fabric brushed across the pink, puckered line along my wrist. A night of desperation and agony had led to the decision. I stared at the opposite wrist and the matching pink line of freshly healed skin that matched the other.
I pulled the blanket closer to me and curled up on the windowsill, turning my back to the window and the world.