His sadness smells like the yellow fruit falling from the tree during summertime. I’d keep my distance, not coming closer, leaving him alone in his private space. He values silence, a quiet room, sunlight playing on surfaces like the Monet paintings he loves. I’m sad I can no longer lie down beside him on his bed – to look at him fall asleep.
His voice echoes like lost days. I’ve been staring at the mahogany door, deep brown as his grief, blocking my view of the blue sky. I don’t want to leave him. The pot with the glass lid holds smells of his care and love, wafts of chicken broth too real. My eyes would water.
Tiptoeing back to his room I’m shrouded with absence. I remember the time when my joints murmured, pain pulsing in my head, especially during stormy nights. I could no longer hold the nausea back, I vomited. He cleaned the floor the way he read books, peaceful, his face showing his distant mind. He’d cup my face and press his lips and nose on my forehead, my cheek. I could hear his inhalation, he loved my smells. His kiss was balm to my sufferings. The vomit became numerous as words he put on paper.
I was diagnosed with late-stage kidney failure. Back home, he closed his room’s windows and cried. We knew each other’s thoughts. I watched him fold the lab results into a brown envelop.
He drank, constantly inebriated with rum in my ordeal’s final two months. I smelled his daze as he brought water-blended moringa, chlorella and wheat grass, which he fed me using a spoon, or with a syringe if I was hardheaded and spat his kidney tonic. He no longer cooked chicken legs or wings, too busy writing as I slept on his bed. He’d wake me, in the middle of his writing frenzy. He’d pull me up and embrace me, smell of rum from his face like summertime’s fruit. He asked God aloud to give him kidney disease. He wanted to die like me.
Joyful moments walking with him outdoors became fewer and fewer. I missed the pleasantly intoxicating smells of grasses and wildflowers. He didn’t want to strain my weakening legs, so he limited our walks outdoors. I longed for those mornings and midafternoons when I ran beside him as he jogged, my happiest days, when I saw him happy, exercising daily and not drinking rum while writing.
He brought me to the hospital for my day-long fluid therapy. I shivered in his cavernous absence, hours dripping slowly like liquid through the plastic tube. Hearing loud voices and laughter of people, I remembered my partner, who was scared of firecrackers. I felt rejuvenated seeing his face. Our trip back home was heavenly. He embraced me a long time. His heartbeats warm as his bed. His mind had become the park of kindness and care I and my partner taught him, which took him years to master. I and my partner sensed his humility, always treating us as teachers.
On December 24th he brought me to the hospital for the last time. My time had arrived, and he knew it. The doctor said nothing could prolong my life. I heard them talk quietly. He said he’d do everything to make my departure comfortable. Back home, he spread his own blanket on his bed. With all my strength I tried prolonging my last moments with him. I smelled firecrackers like his refusal to eat. Early morning the following day I began to struggle, having a hard time breathing, my heartbeats like cats I loved chasing.
When the eighth hour blossomed he knew it was time to pick me up into his embrace. I began to shiver, cold claiming my body slowly and so full of love. I saw my partner passing by, taking short glances at us. His love tightened, and it my eyes watered. I saw him crying, his mouth moving and moving, as though he were saying final words for me to bring to the rainbow bridge. I no longer heard his words clearly, but twice I heard my name like dried summertime fruits from his tongue – Dexter, Dexter. Gentleness gripped my heart, and it felt iron, painful, and I knew it was the last thing my dying heart held.
Something hot spurted out my anus. I smelled blood no matter how faint. He pressed his lips and nose against my cheek, and I knew it was time. 8:10 in the morning when I soared out of my body. I willed myself to hover and take another look at him. I couldn’t hear anything but I saw him screaming. Soundlessness made his cry all the more painful.
I soared towards the light, heavenward pull like love leaving weight behind, gravity no longer holding me to my earthly desires. I remembered the time when I tested my footsteps as a weeks-old youngster, the first time we met when I inhaled his body’s smells that I’d always recognize. As I entered the space of stars, I felt like his baby again, running as fast as I could, exhilarated as I chased the rainbow bridge’s intoxicating smells, sniffing here and there. As I entered deep space I floated. I looked for Leo his constellation, eternity mine. Eternity will be ours together. A pack of happy souls welcomed me to their heavenly home. I was joy personified. I am joy. My brothers and sisters beyond the rainbow bridge are joy.
He spent the morning of Christmas day in the crematorium’s front office, his mind blank as bond paper as he waited for my ashes in a glass jar. He enshrined my enlarged photo framed in glass on his writing table. I’ve been listening to him pray for my guidance. I see his thoughts like kaleidoscopes, his his mind like mandala. His wonder makes me smell Bermuda grass. Quiet joy makes his mind fold like origami. I’m happy to have fulfilled my life’s purpose, having lifted him onto a spiritual place.
One recent evening I was surprised but delighted to see my partner, Nicola, love of my life, mother to my countless boys and girls living across the City with their humans in forever homes. We were reunited, but I felt sad and alarmed. I hadn’t been watching him for some time, so I rushed to his room. It’s been days that he’s stuck in motionless staring, picking himself up only to cook. I saw his lab results, sad his prayers to die like me seems to have been answered. I’m glad he’s stopped drinking. His mind’s sunflowers and lilies show his efforts to regain health, because he still has our younger siblings – Bowitch, Yves and Donna.
Yves and Donna are now parents to Daisy, whom he loves the way he loved me. Bowitch has joined us beyond the rainbow bridge.
He’s been sensing my presence, his turns to look at my favorite corners in the house coinciding with my presence there. I’m grateful he knows I’m alive, waiting for him at the edge of the rainbow bridge.
Jonel Abellanosa lives in Cebu City, The Philippines. His poetry and fiction have appeared in hundreds of magazines and anthologies. His poetry collections include, “Multiverse” (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York), “50 Acrostic Poems” (Cyberwit, India), and his speculative poetry collection, “Pan’s Saxophone” (Weasel Press, Texas).
