"Taken"

I sank to the floor like a rock in a river bed. I just couldn't believe what I had just heard. But some how I knew it before the words had spilled through the receiver. It was like poison spreading through my veins. It spilled from my ear, through my brain cortex. Down my spine passing into my blood stream, and disbursing through my vital organs.

I thought for sure that I might die. For surely her hateful piercing words were meant to kill me. In some way they were; killing me that is, softly but with hatred and unfathomable hostility that she could not have possibly recognized unless I had revealed it to her with anguished screams of terror.

The phone fell from my hand onto the floor, and I heard a voiece call out into the darkness of what was our living room. I looked to see where the horribly pained screams were coming from but there wasn't a soul in sight. I could feel the Tears falling down my face like the streaming rain outside my window. I couldn't feel the floor beneath me but I couldn't feel my body. I couldn't feel my voice blasting from my throat into the open space. But I could feel my heart breaking in my chest.

My Jay was dead.

I knew I had heard but it didn't sound right. I replayed it over and over again in my head trying desperately to understand if I had heard it wrong. But the playback was the same every time and I felt myself crying out into the night with every new understanding. My Jay, My Jayln was Dead.

I felt her hands across my arms and I tore away from her. My sister had come running from the kitchen. Startled by my sudden terrifying out cry of emotion. Of course she didn't know what could cause me to break out into such hysteria; wailing and moaning into the night as if someone was killing me. But I was dieing, My heart was breaking and the pain I felt couldn't be anything but death ripping into my chest and pulling from this earthly plain. I would much rather be dead than have to face the reality of life without him. I felt my body fall to the ground. The tears were still coming down my face.

"NOOOOOOO" I could hear the strange voice anguished and pained.

"WWHhhyyyyy!" He Begged for some explanation as to why god had taken his heart. And I sympathized with him for having been left all alone so suddenly.

I heard My sister voice next, screaming for an explanation as to why he was sobbing so. And I wanted to tell her how I could feel The pain of his loss of the only MAN he had, would, ever love. I saw her kneeling down in front of me. I wondered why she had tears streaming down her face, and why she felt the need to touch me. But I couldn't feel Her hands moving over my body. I couldnt feel her breath against my skin as she spoke to me, demanding that I tell her what was wrong. BUt I didn't understand why she was asking me that question. There was nothing wrong with me. It was him, that poor hurt soul crying out in the darkness around us that needed to be consoled. Finally I saw her tear away from me. SHe was reaching for something on the floor to the left of me. I heard her speaking into the phone. I heard her gasping for air, and I knew coulod now understand what that poor heartbroken boy was crying about. She swung her arm over my shoulder. SHe pulled me close into an embrace, and it was at that moment that I felt the pain of my own voice as it puched its way from my chest into my throat, and out of my mouth.

The voice that tore so heavily through the air, almost shattering my ear drums was my own. I realized that the pain that boy was feeling was not his but mine. He was me, and empathy I had felt so for him, was now replaced with a great longing pain. My Jayln was gone. I felt her hand against my back but I didn't want to be touched by her or anyone else. Jayln was gone and If he could not touch me. If he could not be there. Then no one else deserved the right. No one else had earned the right.

For two years we had lived in bliss. For two years he had been my everything. And all of a sudden now our time was up. "How could he do this to me?" I wondered. "Leave me alone like this. He had promised me that he would never go away. Yet he had." He had floated away into the deep abyss. Leaving My world shut up in darkness.

I pushed my sister away, and I fell to the floor. My hands tore at the carpet, Pulling at the soft shag fabric, and sobbing uncontrollably. I hated that carpet, he had picked that carpet, and I hated it, but I had gotten it for him. But I hated that carpet. I cried into the plush cream space that was the carpet that I hated, but was a symbol of who he was.I cursed that carpet and called it vile things. I spit into it's plush crema face. I hit it with my bald up fist, and I cursed the day we had ever picked it out together. He and I; together. I hated carpet but I had gotten it for him. Now I was stuck with it and he would never see it again.

I would never see him again. As the thought ran through my mind I froze against that plush carpet and I laid there thinking of his last kiss. SOftly against the soft layer of skin on my forehead. I remembered how he smelt. How his lips lingered there in that place, and I closed my eyes so that I could feel him kiss me again. It was a perfect kiss as if he some how knew he would not be walking back through that door as he had promised me before he left. A perfect kiss that said good bye as only he knew how to say good bye. I laid there on that carpet that I hated, that he loved, that I had only purchased for him, and I knew I would never get rid of it, Because it was the carpet he loved so much.

I cursed that carpet, I cursed his name. "Jayln" More tears came as I cursed his name. I cried for him, and there was my pain. I hated him, and wished he was there to wrap me up in his safe strong arms. There to tell me it would all be okay. But Jayln was gone. He was gone, and I was all alone, with that carpet that I hated, but I had gotten because he loved it.