Tim Woodrum
A Day in the Life
Huey looked straight into the eyes of his lover. He could see the pain in her eyes as tears began to well up in them. A tear trickled down her cheek and he could feel his throat tense and his own eyes begin to moisten. She looked lovingly at Huey and said, "I can't be with someone who doesn't believe me when I say I love them." She looked pleadingly at him, waiting for a response with tears rolling slowly down her face. Huey wanted more than anything to say something. Anything would be better than letting her walk away without a struggle. He could see that she desperately wanted him to speak as well. He could hear the gentle cooing of a pigeon and realized that even the animals were not ignorant of his situation. Even the pigeons begged him to move his mouth. He tried to speak...to force his mouth to do his will and make her stay, but he was paralyzed. Unable to speak or move. Only capable of staring into her beautiful face and realizing how much that he did love her. How much life would hurt without her. He was numb.
For the first time he felt the biting chill of the cold as she began to move her body from his. He had to act now. Reach for her. Pull her tight. Tell her all the emotions that welled up like a geyser in his heart now as he beheld her. As she moved away from him he noticed everything about her that he had ever loved or could ever love about another person, another person that wouldn't be her. Her summer-colored skin. Her perfectly separated and individual eyelashes. Somehow Huey had even found joy in her eyelashes. He had never claimed to be perfectly normal. The second knuckle of her pinky and a hairline that wasn't perfectly straight gave him joy. The pain that shot through his very being while he stood powerless as she sobbed and turned her back to him was such that he no longer knew the absence of pain and knew that he may never know such a sublime absence again.
Huey stood comatose on the street all night. Eventually it began to
rain. Maybe even hail, the size of baseballs. It didn't matter. All that
Huey could do was stand there and replay his last glimpse of happiness as
it walked away from him.