“I am a broke man,” he said.
The sun had yet to crack through the fabrics of the morning cold. The streaks of cold infused with the streaks of light that shimmered on the cold concrete walls. He lay still in his bed seeking to understand the chard of ice that pierced his heart. Instead of the chard killing him, the chard melted into him making his heart hard and solid like a glacier. Floating in a sea of turbulent emotions, he floated under the notion that he is a man.
In the warm covers of his bed, his thoughts drifted to different memories that shaped his existence. Even though they say that memories are subjective and prone to change over time, some memories were so deeply engraved in his soul that they replayed themselves as they happened.
Closing his eyes trying to understand these memories, he saw her. He saw her beautiful smile. He felt the fragments of her kiss that lingered eternally on his lips. She was the love he never thought he’d find. Like an oyster clamping on its pearl, he held on to her. He clutched her in a cage of vulnerability and strength. He tried to be less of a man and to be more of a human for her. Through her, he knew what love was.
The pain of having known love lived with him. The tips of his fingers no longer felt the tingles that erupted from being embraced by the love of his life. Instead, his fingers burnt from the toxic caresses of her ghost.
“I am a broke man,” he told himself, “but I am still a man.”
He took a deep breath. He removed the warm covers to be met by the cold breeze from his empty room; empty like his heart. He was a man. The cold was his world.
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