Three blocks away the winter raven lies.
He has fallen to one side and his tiny heart beats no more.
There is a movement inside his belly where evil little things crawl.
One by one they make their ascent out a warm throat.
From his mouth, they drop to the stark ground and blister.

I fear it has begun. . .


                    "Dark Monday"


The following day I went to Ontario with my parents for the entire week. Halfway through this vacation, if you can call it that I began to withdraw.
I felt like an addict in desperate need of a fix, and I was becoming mentally unsound. There was no doubt about it, if I did not get back to her soon
I would not be able to last much longer like this. Aside from the physical aches and pains, that I would assess had come from an intense longing,
I was becoming very confused and distraught. Before we left, this had progressed into pure panic accompanied by a feeling of complete unbridled terror. Unable to do anything, I found myself agonizing over
it until at last, I was back in the loving arms of my baby once more. My beautiful angel, I have so much to tell you! Even though it snowed here every day it did nothing but torment me for in my heart, I was alone
with them. I picked up so many trinkets for Harmony, and was overjoyed at the prospect of leaving. When I returned home, mom found a letter with my name on it in the mailbox. An envelope with no stamp. Since it was written in her handwriting, I couldn't wait to open it, thinking that perhaps she was feeling better, and maybe she had planned something wonderful for my return. The letter read as follows. My dearest love, I am so sick. I can no longer move my legs, and my arms are weak. My complexion has become pallid and my spirit sad. I am dying. I did not want to alarm you, but I find I have no other choice now, than to tell you. Please be strong and know that I wanted you, forever. In time, you would have been my husband. If you still had love for me then. You were wonderful to me.
No one has ever treated me as warm and as kind as you,
but the time has come for me to say goodbye.

                                          Pg 222
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I was diagnosed with cancer last year and found out last month that it
has spread to my pancreas. I cannot put you through this any longer.
My mother and father have returned to the states and are taking good
care of me, so you need not worry. I feel I may not have much longer.
I do have but one wish for you, my lover. *My little prince* If you cannot fulfill my one wish, then you never loved me at all. My wish is, that you do not follow me. Where I am going, you cannot go. Not now. I will watch over you and protect you, if I can. Promise me you will not do anything foolish to hurt yourself. "Promise me." If you do, then we will be separated in death. I know this is difficult, but please try to understand
and do not worry my love, God will call upon you when he is ready,
and I will be right here waiting for you.

P.S. - It's okay if you find someone else to love.
          I understand. It is your right.
          You'll always be "my" one and only.

                  Love forever - Harmony


She must have forgotten to put a return address on the envelope,
because I wanted to write her and tell her how bad I missed her,
and how much I needed to see her again. To hold her in my arms.
To whisper softly in her ear and make everything better.

                                   It never happened.

If you can imagine how much I loved her,
then you're not even close.

After reading the letter, I ran to her house, as though I were being
chased by demons. I tried to open the door, but it was locked, and
so I used my key. As I stepped in, I saw with my own two eyes, there
was nothing there. The house was but a hollow shell, and there was not
one thing in that whole entire house remaining to remind me of her. Just the cold emptiness of lost dreams, and one pink plastic Rainbow hanger. She had been erased. For a second everything seemed to stop, and I lost my balance. I was too numb to cry. As I looked around, I honestly thought
I might be dreaming. I trembled as I walked up those stairs into her room. Upon seeing the red rug and nothing else, I collapsed. My thoughts swirling in confusion and I needed her so bad right now that I felt like I might actually die. It was all gone and all I had left was a tiny picture of her. I never thought it would end. I didn't think it could.

                                          Pg 223
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The feeling I felt at that very moment, I could not even begin to
describe. It was despair in its purest form, encapsulated in grief
beyond that of human understanding. It is the darkest and loneliest
feeling a human being can ever begin to experience, and there is
no darker a place than that of complete and utter abandonment.

It felt as though the lights had permanently gone out in my universe. . .
It was the beginning of Dark Monday.

Like I had eaten from the tree of life, and was now being hewn down
and trampled upon. Indeed, I had knowingly sampled the forbidden fruit
and was now cursed to walk the earth forever without her. It was a fate worse than death, and I knew at that very moment what it felt like to be cast out of Heaven; it aches to the very core of reason. From that point
on, school which I had almost begun to embrace, would become nothing more than a prison term. I distanced myself from everyone, including my parents and pondered this cruel fate. It got to the point where I could no longer look out my window, for every time I saw that house, I saw a graveyard. I saw her dying in that house while I was so far away. How alone she must have felt. Probably worse than I feel right now. I asked God again and again and again, why couldn't you have given me the cancer? Why did my angel have to die? Why do you hate me
so much God? Tell me why!!!

Can anyone out there understand what it's like to lose everything?
I should pray you never know. What hurts the most is when I come
to the realization that I have to replace her. You can replace objects,
and you can repair things, but a woman as wonderful as Harmony
can never be replaced. Nor can my life ever be repaired. When the impassioned cries turned to wailing, I buried my face into the pillow and screamed, till the shattered dreams within the numbness of my own brain displaced my emotions, and all was calm again.

Every morning upon waking, I would look out my window and weep.
Please God, kill me. I shouted and I cried, and I could never quite
come to terms with it. Was what we did so bad that you had to take
her away from me? I would have given her my life and everything in it,
and one day the world would have understood this love of ours!

Are you listening to me? Why won't you hear me?

I then realized in all this horror,
maybe there's no one there either.

                                          Pg 224
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The most wonderful place in the whole wide world had turned into something so dark and dreadful, that I went out of my mind. I could
no longer understand people when they spoke to me because the words
were no longer being filtered properly, and the only thing I saw when
I looked out my window were the memories we shared, slowly dying.
I used a roll of masking tape to cover the glass, whereby secluding
myself. There I would weep for hours upon hours on end. I knew my
life was over at that moment, and I felt so horrified and frightened of everyone and everything around me. The mere thought of not going
over there anymore to see my baby had me stricken with such deep
affliction that I wasn't sure I would be able to live through the night.
The very thought of having to change direction and go somewhere else,
after all we've been through vexed me to a point of rending my own flesh. It wasn't real. It couldn't be! If there was a God out there, it couldn't be!
I needed to go back to that house, and I needed for her to be there again.
I needed desperately for this to be just a bad dream. I needed for us to
be happy again, and laugh again, but happiness and laughter left with Harmony.

Everything that I once held dear, had been taken from me and
smashed into a million pieces. I don't know who I am anymore.
I feel so lost without you, my precious angel.
So uncertain of everyone around me.
Why must I be the one to live?

Less than a month went by when I heard my mother in the kitchen
reading the evening paper. "Oh, no... Charlie," she said in a choked
up voice. "Harmony passed away last night." My blood turned cold,
and it was the onset of nightmares and torments, which plague me to
this very day. "She was so nice, and she was only twenty two years old." Silently, I went up to my room and cried uncontrollably. As I was doing this a song came on the AM dial. A song that would take me to the very essence of all anguish in my darkest and most terrifying hour. It was a new song by David Ruffin called "My whole world ended." At that moment
I felt like Judas Iscariot before the hanging. I pleaded to God, but all he wanted to do was torture me. Why was I so hated and what have I done that was so terrible that it could not be forgiven? I then realized I had been cursed by God. Because I fell in love and decided to care for someone? That's your reason to punish me for the rest of my life? Because another human being found it in her heart to love me? Is that so wrong? Please
I cried, don't do this to me! It was like salt being ground into a wound. Such exquisite torment for someone so young.
What was I going to do now?

                                          Pg 225
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As I sit in another time, typing from a modern day computer,
I find my eyes still produce the same salty tears they did over thirty
years ago. My stomach has awoken and is growling, desperately trying to digest itself as I again, begin to weep uncontrollably. Why did I have to open that door? Everything was going along just fine, but I had to go back. I unearthed her because she needed to live again. She should never have died in the first place, so I decided
to go back. I went back to breathe life into her one last time. I feel
she deserves at least that. To live on in the hearts and minds of others who will carry her spirit with them as they read this book. Our book.
I needed to feel her hand in mine. . . (((Her warm embrace))) *Those beautiful eyes* I needed to see you again, and now I'm sick, again. Harmony, my dearest love, you will forever be my weakness.

One night in my torment, I thought about going over to her house and
just lying there in the darkness. Maybe she would come to me and free
me somehow, but I knew that if I went into that house again, I would not
be leaving sane. Toward the end of the month, a small box arrives in the mail and is addressed to me. Mother brings it upstairs to my room, and questions me about it. I say, I'm not sure who sent it, maybe it's from Timmy, and she let it go at that. Carefully, I opened the box with a small screwdriver and pulled the letter out. Upon doing so, something fell out
of a tissue and bounced under my bed. It went all the way back by the headboard and almost down the shaft where the missing register was.
It was Harmony's peace ring, and I came undone as I squeezed it
ever so tightly in my hand.

Inside this small box were pages to a letter that had been folded up
and then stapled together. The first paragraph is all I can reveal
to you, and this, I do with much hesitation.

Please don't be angry with me for leaving you, my love. This is the last thing anyone could ever want. I waited and am sad that you have not replied back to me. Have you forgotten me so soon? As you can tell by the handwriting, I am not writing this, but my brother, for I am no longer able to write as I am far too weak. This will be my final letter to you, and
if you are holding it now, I am in the next life. As you read on, you are
not alone my little prince, for I am standing right beside you.

                                          Pg 226
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This is as far as I am willing to take you. The rest of the letter
is far too painful to relive again, and I will not do that to myself.
I apologize. As I have given you this story and bared my soul for
a world to judge, it now appears that I have opened a floodgate,
I can no longer close.

As I continued reading the letter, I found that it was five pages of the
most heart wrenching words my mind could ever begin to understand.
All her hopes, aspirations and dreams that washed away were revealed
in this letter. How much she wanted to live and continue revolving her
life around me, until I was old enough to accept the responsibility of
having children. How she longed for the day she could travel abroad
and see the world with the man she loved, and our children. What I came to realize, was that the love she had for me would far outweigh any doubt that might have previously existed, for she spoke of it in depth in her final hours and my mind shattered. I wanted so dearly to become a man, that I got lost in her eyes. Till at last, I became nothing. Nothing but a pallbearer of mourning in a terrifying world filled with gut-wrenching despair.

There is one part on the fifth page towards the very end of the letter
that invokes tears every time I read it.

Take what I've given you, my darling, and give it in time
to someone new. Make her your world.
The world I can no longer give you.

There can never be another you, my sweet love. I pray for an
end that doesn't come, and I weep, unimpressed by what the years
have shown me. Looking back now, on all the wonderful times we spent together, I can truly say I love you more now than ever. If only
I could hold you in my arms again. Kiss your lips again. Watch you
smile. What a precious and beautiful dream we shared. Has anyone ever wept in Heaven? I will, when I look into your eyes again. As I look down at my hands, I notice my skin is slowly changing. I am no longer young. I am forty four years old and that is twice the age you were when you were taken from me. Will you even recognize me
when I finally come home to you or will I be lost there too?

The letter which tore my heart open
I absorbed into the very fabric of my being,
till I became the pain of losing her.

                                          Pg 227
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In the last part of the letter Harmony writes, "I saw something in your eyes that day. The very first day we kissed, you remember. The day I wanted to kill you, I was so angry! Then your eyes filled with tears, and you told me how much you cared for me. I was stunned beyond words. To see you that heartbroken over me was more than my own heart could bear. That look in your eyes, I will never forget it. A woman knows when she is loved, Charlie. When she is adored. That is the picture I am taking with me, when I leave this world. Before I go, I will give you a sign that I am okay. Then you must promise to move on and not dwell in my shadow, for I will not be in it." Do you know that as I got to that part of the letter,
I felt an icy cold mist surround me, as if something was trying to hug me?
It went through my clothes and touched my skin like a moist towelette. Then, as subtle as a goodnight kiss, my lover departed forever. A bond
so precious, her loving wraith could not forget. Harmony I cried,
I can't hold you anymore!!! Then I passed out.

Sometimes, I can almost feel myself bleeding inside. A gnawing  pain that refuses to let up, like a painful addiction that only hides,
it no longer goes away. If only I could stop thinking about you, honey. To put this whole thing to rest, so that I can continue living. Maybe it's not too late for me to start a family. Who am I kidding? I'm hooked on you baby. If I have to wait a lifetime for the pain to subside, so be it. Yet sometimes still, I am happy for I am loving you again. In a place where remorse is non existent, and the innocent virtues which once captured my heart are alive in your smile. Traveling to distant places, I make you laugh as I have always made you laugh, only this time I do it as a man, but you can still see the
boy in me. Then we arrive at our house, which always seems to be different in every dream! Nonetheless, it is beautiful because you decorate it so well. Then, I open my eyes to find that it was all a dream. We never made Jasmine and Ornelo either, I guess, or is
this the nightmare and the other side real? I'm not sure anymore.
It doesn't really matter anyway for I am almost Home.

If I should never have another enjoyable day. See another beautiful smile. Touch another wonderful face. If I should never hold another gentle hand, then I can honestly say with a whole heart, you were worth it my darling. What's worse than growing old, than growing old without her? This I ask myself from time to time, but I can honestly think of nothing worse than the fate I've been predestined to share with those kind enough to listen. In life, I have learned more than I should have about love, but I just wasn't ready. To be a man before you can be a boy will ultimately destroy your soul. In all truth, what we had was simply too beautiful for this world; it had to be saved for the next. Through the terror, the madness and the outpouring of tears, I never stopped loving God. I thought it was God, who stopped loving me. The most ironic part of it all is that once,
I was terrified of death. Now I am terrified of life.

                                          Pg 228
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