Black is everywhere. It’s the ground where he fell, it’s the bag his beautiful body was taken away in, it’s the color of the dress I wore to his funeral, it’s how I feel, and it’s the color of the journal I have kept since I was ten. The journal he talked me into keeping because he had been keeping one of his own. Even then, he loved the thrill of putting words on paper. I never got a thrill out of it, and now it just plummets me further into the black.
3 days after…
March 6th, 2010
The funeral. His sister Serena took care of everything. His best friend Caleb was back in town. I didn’t even know he was back from his tour in Afghanistan. He helped Serena. His mother Grace, his sister, his nephew Trent, and I sat together. That’s really all I remember.
3 months after…
June 9th, 2010
Each day is a test of will. Will I get out of bed, will I take a shower, will I leave the house, will I eat dinner, will I sleep on the couch, the floor, or in the spare room because there is no fucking way I’m going back into that bedroom. When I go in there—I see him everywhere—and when I sleep in there I can’t stop dreaming about him. The thing is, they are not dreams; they are nightmares because when I dream, I dream he’s here with me, and when I wake up—I’m alone.
I had my first dream about a week after he was killed. I woke up in the middle of the night, and he was lying next to me. I laid my head on his chest to hear him breathe. I ran my hand up his stomach to feel his hard muscles. God, he felt so good and I missed him so much, and here he was. So I laid my head on his chest, happy to have him back, and fell back asleep. Of course, when I woke up in the morning, I was alone.
I had my second dream after Grace insisted on taking me to the doctor because she knew I wasn’t sleeping well. The doctor prescribed Ambien, and that night I decided to sleep in our room. Grace stayed with me, as she often did, and I fell asleep easily. I woke up in darkness. He was leaning over me, kissing me, running his hand up my thigh and under my shorts. He moved my panties to the side and plunged his finger inside me before completely removing my panties. Then he removed his boxers and slid inside me easily, moving slow at first, then faster, his thrusts increasing until he found his release. That is when I woke up and realized he wasn’t there, I was alone again and my dream was just a sweet memory of what we had done so many times before he was killed.
The nightmares of his death come no matter where I sleep. They are of that night, the road we took, the stop light, the gun, the loud echoing sound of the bullet that fired out of it’s chamber, him calling me by my full name, and him falling to the ground—blood everywhere. In my nightmares we take different roads and stop at different lights, but the outcome is always the same. He calls me by my full name and then he dies. Dahlia. Death. Those two words have echoed in my head almost every night.
The police called Grace last week to let her know they had arrested the man who killed him. They found the gun he used. His fingerprints were all over it, which lead the police directly to him. He later confessed to the shooting. Serena came by to let me know because Grace couldn’t talk about it. She was just too upset. Caleb stopped by later to check on me and ended up sleeping on the couch. He’s worried about me so he ends up crashing here a lot lately.
6 months after….
September 15th, 2010