'In the End' by Fu'ad Lawal

His words carried with it the weight of defeat.

“It did.”

“I hate to say this but,” he paused, an obvious sign he was weighing his next few words carefully. “If it mattered, we won’t be having this conversation.”

Silence. Time-stretching, awkward silence.

“Its amazing,” he broke the silence, “how you spend your entire self trying to be there for someone that you forget your own self. And when you when you lose that person, you can barely even recognise yourself. You can barely remember what you and your friends used to talk about. You can’t even remember your favourite drink. You lose them and now you are left with the who-am-I question, a question you’d have to learn to answer all over again.”

The only other pair of hands on his table, in the corner of the little restaurant, stretched forward and buried his in them, as four became two, and two became a mound of clasped hands.

“First,” she began, “I believe it mattered. You were beside her, day and night. You gave her your best. You didn’t give up even though everybody else did. She didn’t win the fight, but she knows you tried and for that, she would be grateful. The effort is everything.”

Had she not spoken, the things her hands said to his would have sufficed.

“All those things you want to re-learn, we’d do it, together,” she added, with a smile.

He felt safe –awkward, but nonetheless safe.

That moment, she gave herself, as a solemn sacrifice on the altar of his happiness. And from that point on, she began to forget, not her promise, but her self, not giving an iota of care to the thought that one day, he too will be no more.

Fuad Lawalis a poet and copy writer. He blogs at rebelliousflash300.wordpress.com. Follow him on Instagram/Twitter @rebelliousXIV

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