Unable.

"She will die". She must die. The endless phrasing drifted across my body like the hand of some careless phantom; an accidental skim of my body, with their ghastly cold, a monotone reality coloured in monochrome. The joy, the smiles, the laughter, the warmth, the arguments, the time, the friends, Christmas's, birthdays, crises, pets, and those I introduced to you, albeit indirectly. It all became so pale. Only I would remain. I stood within the shadow you cast over my life, and wept to myself.

I cried for the lack of trust, the lack of involvement, the lack of emotion, interaction, humour, the lack of humanity. I have mourned for your death, so many years ago, mother. The intensity of it all, and those I tried to reach for, would surely be too much. I thought back to their deaths, and I thought back to the death of my lover's family. How I lacked the reasoning and compassion I should have known, and shown, because I refused to feel.

I think to the summer, and look to the summer, but nobody is there. They have all become silhouettes, and just like you, I have no person to hold my hand, to hold and collect my tears. It didn't have to be this way, if only I had known what it meant to love someone romantically. And while you may have shown me love, this is one aspect of my life that remained sheltered. Clumsy hands on occasion would offer a rose, a kiss, a hug, and insight into what it would mean to be in possession of a person's love, but ultimately it would be me who would triumph. I would succeed in avoiding the betrayal you had suffered; the betrayal that was imprinted into my mind as a child. My suspicions of any person who looked at me the way they do in films; films about great love stories, 'The End' in calligraphic text. Was I doomed to this fate, or would one day someone find me; find me lost and unsure?