To you, my June

 

I am sick of the smell of this hospital. It irritates my nostrils, I hope I never get to smell it again. The beds are washed with low quality bleach, the one they get for dirt cheap, its stench so strong it blinds you at first. They wash the sheets everyday, as if us breathing on them, touching them, is enough to sully their fabric to the point of no return. The nurses look at you, the most beautiful man to have walked this earth, and turn their scrunched noses away. They never see past your chart. They don't glimpse the ethereal beauty that entranced me the first time I saw you, that got me hooked until now.

I walked into a room so familiar it felt like home. All the voices harmonizing on that stage were ones I knew and loved. Gary's baritone, Adam's slightly higher pitch, and Paul's inability to hold a note, they all mixed into an amalgamation of sounds that felt like a hug. I was never a singer before meeting these people, never cared for it, but I was starved for a community, and they had their arms open wide for a runaway with nothing but the clothes on his back.

No church opened its doors to a sinner like me. And if they did, it wasn't long before they found out why my father threw me away like loose change. They would pray for my errant soul and then push me away to rot in a ditch where they won't have to witness my debauchery. 

But the choir, they had a reputation. One that would make unwanted people stay away, but that urged me to knock on their doors. Desperate, hungry, cold and shivering, they took me in. It was a few hours before I felt safety and understanding, two things I thought were unobtainable for someone like me.

That day, a new harmony emerged from the group. I can't say that you were the best, Mark was famously the most gifted of us, but nobody's voice made me feel the way yours did. As if I had gold running through my veins, as if I could soar. 

Our eyes met, you had a shy smile on a face sculpted by angels, and I felt a hand squeeze my heart and drop it all the way to the floor.

I've been yours since.

My June, 

When the illness started spreading, and everyone around us felt its claws tearing at their skin, I thought you were untouchable. You had fire in your eyes, a soul that would never dim, and your hands brought me to heights I never fathomed before. To me, you were immortal, someone not even the reaper could take away from me. I was so wrong, love, the virus ate at you from the inside, it sucked you dry right in front of me, and there was nothing I could do to ease the pain. 

You grew sicker as the time passed, your lovely limbs thinned and your silky hair fell in clumps as I brushed it away from your sunken cheeks. You turned into my worst nightmare right in front of me, yet I loved you more than anything in the universe.

You didn't want to go to the hospital at first. When Paul was there before you, the nurses refused to resuscitate him when his heart stopped, a heart that held us all and more. They said they were scared of contamination, they burned his body as they did with rabid dogs. We cried for days. 

But at one point, we needed to take you there. I stayed with you all the time, I learned the necessary steps to get your heart running again. I kissed you even when the doctors told me not to, warned me that it might get me sick as well. I didn't care, everything I had to lose was on a hospital bed, if death took us together, I'd be grateful. 

You withered, my June. Like the most exquisite of flowers. Your lifespan couldn't stretch further, no matter how hard I tried. I wanted you there for one more hour, one more minute, a breath, even. Just enough to kiss you goodbye, forever maybe. 

My June,

I die everyday without you.

Marwa Damaan