Acknowledgment

He stared at me through the thin glass pane. 

He stared at my entire soul through his dead orbs. He stared at me as I averted my eyes to not look even a single bit. 

The leaves faded from bright green to dark gray. my vision desaturated everything I passed by. The people I met along the way sounded monotonous to me. Sunlight even pricked my skin. 

If I was in that room, I'd suck everything up.

my calloused hands would trace the walls. they would echo of fallen memories, every inch a recollection of the past. I'd stand in the exact spot where he lied in his bed. my frail and tiny hands clutching against the side of it.

"Spell 'acknowledgment' for me," he'd test me. 

I'd nod confidently, the gap between my front teeth showing as I grinned. "A-C-K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-M-E-N-T!"

His laughter would stuff the whole room, and a hard cough would usually follow. He'd pat the top of my head, and in response I'd close my eyes and smile. 

if I go back there now,

The marble floor would sting my feet with every step. As if the past was coming back to life all over again. There'd be no bed anymore. just an empty space to replace it. An empty space where old stuff toys and cardboard boxes would stay. An empty space where I'd stuff myself in, and cover my face with my jet black bangs, and laugh hysterically until I convinced myself I was crazy.

Am I crazy?

He coughed up blood. he screamed for help in his head. But inside his heart he knew it was all for the best. His weak body managed to crawl to life an inch. and when the blackness devoured him, he remained on the white mattress, as if untouched. 

Ah, but he wasn't. 

I killed him. I killed him with my oblivious hands, my fingers clutching on his neck. I wrung it. I wrung it with all my force until his soul left. 

I didn't save him. I killed him. 

While he lied on that bed, pleading to live, on the verge of falling off the cliff we call death, I killed him. I sat in front of a computer screen, my eyes blank. Shut off by whatever anime I was watching. When I heard the slightest wince, when I heard his body cry a little, I didn't come. guess what?

I continued playing computer games. 

And when people said he died of whatever reasons, when the doctor told us it was all natural, all because of old age, I knew the truth. It wasn't old age or whatever other crappy excuse. It was homicide. 

Now, as I stare at the coffin that he rests in, confined by the glass that makes me claustrophobic just at the sight of it, he stares at me. 

I want to go back to that night. I want to shut the computer down.  I want to crawl by his old bed, on the opposite side, and do everything I didn't when he breathed of life. but most of all, i want to spell acknowledgment once again.

He stares at me, and I can see, with my very own eyes, that his soul is alive and watching me right now from afar. He is watching me behind the pine trees, laughing at how I look at his lifeless body. His usual wheezing.

And his soul comes up to me. It breathes unlike the body I now gaze at. It breathes of both life and death, breathes of nirvana or heaven or whatever. It places its soft hands on my two shoulders, nearing its lips to my ears.

It whispers ever so slightly. 

"Spell 'acknowledgment' for me."

And I do. I do because I want to do it for the last time before the men let go of the coffin and bury it down. I want to do it before the relatives would approach me and speak of comfort when it's sugarcoated most of the time. I want to do it, no, not because of the regret that filled me when I killed him, but because I want to pay respect to the figure who made me memorize the freaking alphabet. I want to pay respect to the person who made me do chores, who'd make me spell 'difficult' words when I was eight, who'd test my knowledge in English. Who was one of the greatest men in my life.

Who left my grandmother alone, sitting in her rocking chair, watching television and laughing at the screen. Counting the days as they float away to oblivion. Alone.

I want to pay respect to my grandfather.