No more unfinishedness, damn it! No more, you hear? She hissed at his photo, her face puffy with tears shed and tears gathering, all this liquid pouring from eyes staring at a bubble with the words "Nope. Bye. See you soon." Her words, uttered weeks ago. The silence - if this was the forever after silence - not this way! She begged him in her thoughts, pleaded for him to understand, give her this time - one week, just one week. Even a single day would have sufficed but... but she wanted him to see her as she was, as she lived apart from him. She wanted him to taste her life. Unsure of the longevity of this life, only believing that with him in it, with his love protecting her, it would extend by necessity, it would progress because of his protection?

'Mum, come quick. Grandpa fell again, this time it's bad!'

She bounded down the stairs after her son. Took charge as always, the motions automatic now... another trip to emergency, more x-rays, more swearing from him; more accusatory glances from the trendy doctors and the usual talk about his being "better off in a home." 

'He's in a home! His home!' This spat out because. Because this shitty life of hers had been enclosed these many months in a cocoon of love and now she stood outside of this love! Alone - this aloneness different for having known a love, her first love. Only not quite knowing if it was? Could it be real this love of hers?

Or had she made it all up, craving this being important to someone who didn't 'need her' didn't depend on her... oh but that's what she craved exactly though; a man who needed her, the man who once said "I will not properly breathe again until I hear from you." Only he was breathing now, and he was, he was away from her!

And could he not see they couldn't live within this limbo - not the two of them. Within it, they would kill it off eventually; she could feel how they were killing it already. Like a marriage, they'd been slowly drifting into complacency; too many "Yes dear," utterances between them, too many predictable nuances... Settling, settling... until there'd be no more settling to be done, and one day there would be no contact then this over weeks becoming more intermittent still, until one day- until there was no care whether one heard from the other or when the last words had occurred between them?

She didn't want to see her love die out of fear, to see it deteriorate over time and end with this question unanswered: What if? What if they'd met? Either way, this would end, whether they discovered no real life compatibility by meeting, or by trying to keep alive something with words alone... But her way felt much more humane?