When I stare at something long enough without blinking my eyes get blurry and everything's out of focus. It is happening now. Still, I keep them open, counting the seconds away in my head: thirty-seven-mississippi, thirty-eight-mississippi...I blink. Damn. My eyes focus again but I'm still looking at the same thing, the back of our familiar blue front door.
The paint is chipped now. It comes off in pieces in my hand when I touch it, leaving behind the naked, exposed beige of the wood. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't notice but you would run off to the hardware store in a second, trying to find the exact same shade of sparkling sapphire so you could patch it up. I knock my hand against the roughness, not enough to cause serious pain, but just so it bleeds a little. The red blood coats my fingers, more than I intended, contrasting beautifully with the blue when I hold my hand against the door. I study the colours for a moment before fetching a band-aid from under the bathroom sink.
Someone is knocking. There's a bell, but it's broken, and everyone who comes over tries to ring it for five minutes before they realize it's stuck. If they're knocking it means I must know them. I know it's stupid, impossible, but until I open the door I think it's you. The reality slaps me in the face.
Lauren, my best friend, comes into the front hall like she always does, full of purpose and urgency. "What's going on, Anna?" she asks. "I left you a dozen messages."
I shrink back into the stairwell. I really didn't want to see anyone but you. I only want to spend my days waiting for the click of your key in the lock, or the angry pounding on the door when you realize you've forgotten it, but she doesn't seem to be leaving.
"Is this what you've been doing all day? Waiting for him?" she says, not unkindly, but I can't answer because she's right: I have been waiting for you. I lean against the banister, willing myself to disappear into it, to fade away, because I haven't wanted to live ever since you...
"He isn't coming back," Lauren says.
"They never found a body." It's a lame attempt and I know it, but it's also the only thing that's keeping me alive.
"It was a bomb, Anna," she says softly. "He's dead."
Crash! I've pushed so hard against the banister that the picture of us, which I had perched there after you'd gone, has shattered on the floor. I want to dive for it, rescue you from the shards of broken glass, but Lauren quickly picks it up and sweeps all the pieces into a neat little pile with the toe of her shoe.
"I know," I say, and I can see the tears blurring my vision, can feel them rising up into my eyes and spilling over. "I know...it's bad...it's so bad but..." I wipe my eyes with the back of my hand and shake my head. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be stupid."
"I'm...I feel awful...and I keep waiting but he won't come. I can't do anything else, it feels like the grief is crushing me, all the time, because I had got used to being happy, and now it's all so..." I lean back into the stairs, feeling the steps dig into my back. Maybe, if I try hard enough, the physical pain will take away this cavernous, endless pit of emotion that I've fallen into. "Shit, Lauren, I wake up and I forget that he's not here because the idea of being without him is so ridiculous. And I'm angry, I'm fucking furious that it was him and not someone else...it was so random. And now he's gone..."
I sit down again and look up at Lauren who is crying and hiccuping now as well. I am finished speaking. I think: nothing matters. Since you died, all I want to do is lie down and let the life drain from my body, but every second my heartbeat keeps reminding me that I'm alive.Forty-mississippi, forty-one-mississippi, forty-two...
Lauren sits beside me, hugs me, says that as long as I need her she'll be here. I bury my face in her hair and inhale the sickly-sweet fruit scent of her shampoo.
Do you know what I'm supposed to do with all this love for someone who's not here? Do I repress it? Do I lose it? The idea of giving it to anyone else is hideous.
Because I'm still existing, and so is my love, and the door is staring at me. Its decaying blue paint screams: you are not here.
{for Cal's Some Kind of Chorus contest.
word: 015 calamity
song: My Doorbell by The White Stripes - lyrics}
First of all, I'd like to say that I like this piece very much, and if can remember to do it, I'll give you a gold star after I'm done. Secondly, I think you ought to change the rating from G to PG, because of the swearing. 'Kay? 
Anyway, on to the review!
