Her eyes were always a deep grey, a soft liquidized metal. I remember distinctly how they hardened when she died, as if her pulse had been all that was keeping them fluid. The solidifying reminisce of a distinguished lava lamp, creating frightening shapes to frame the empty pupil. I walked into that room for the first and the last time that day. The bed was central, the rest of the room cluttered by noisy, intimidating medical equipment. I noted with hollow amusement how the bed we once laid in together was so full of lust and life in comparison to this bed, this bed was just there. Nothing more than a place to store her. I walked over to her placid form and took her hand in both of mine, rough callus fingers caressing over loose skin, denting veins where they met. She lifted her gaze to mine and I saw the empty space within her irises and knew what was to come.
'Julie.' I choked, my voice lost somewhere between my longing for her and my fear. She slightly parted her assaulted lips, blood glistening on the deep slits in them, a ghost breath hanging between them - I took the signal and bent forward and lightly touched mine to hers. Her taste was chemical, as it became in the final months, it burned my tongue slightly causing it to retreat snail-like and take shelter behind my teeth. They'd moved her from a room tight with the tension of hope to this empty vacuum of despair. We both knew, in an morbid unspoken understanding, that we were there until her end. I placed the back of my hand on her forehead, in an attempt to gauge the extent of her illness by the heat radiating from her. I hoped maybe my soothing touch would obliterate what was growing inside her mind, that my love would be enough to stun her into remission. It wasn't. She breathed her final breath against the badly shaven underside of my tightened jaw. I tried to catch it in my own mouth so maybe I could exhale the life back into her, but it escaped between my dry sobs and I watched it float away forever. Her soft, liquid eyes. Frozen eternally in time. Never to lock with mine again. I held her against my shaking chest for hours afterwards, unable to let her go even when the nurses came in to drag her vestal away. My fingers gripped her stiffening limbs so aggressively they left fingernail marks in the areas where her blood began to pool. Remembering how her hair bounced when she ran, how her smile melted the ice around my heart and how perfectly she writhed against me, knowing nothing would ever bring me that joy again. They eventually had me removed from that room. My eyes blurring in angry tears as I stared at her one last time. Onyx where warmth had once been, mortal darkness monopolizing everything we were, and all we would never be.
