2 A promise
The evening was rather gloomy, the sky saturated blue ink as the creaking chair rocked on her weight. Lilith looked upon the sky, the moonlight seemed to be looking down at her.
The azure light made her grieve a little more. With the folded papers on her lap, it crumpled to her clenched hands, and there she whimpered.
Her eyes began to redden, and her upper eyelids were sticky with fluid, soon became heavy, she slept.
By morning, the sun shined through the window and to her face.
The sun was strong, her black gown dried completely. The fiber of her clothes was rough, it seemed to have stiffened under the beaming light.
The chair moved as Lilith slowly stood up, the papers from her lap slid down to the ends of her gown and hit the wooden surface of the house.
Perhaps from bawling her heart out yesterday, Lilith walked slowly as if she is weary and soulless.
*tap…. tap…. tap...*
Her feet tapped sluggishly on the ground; it took her minutes to finally turn a corner leading to ‘their’ bedroom. She felt as if she carries plague to their home she stood in the doorway and paused to the thought of infecting their bed with sorrow.
She entered and laid in the center, the mattress used to be filled with roses of comfort, now felt like thorns on her back.
It was painful for her to slumber and rest in this room, in this house. Every way she turns to look, she yearns for Gerald’s trace, she craves for her husband’s presence.
“I can’t” she sobbed burying the side of her face on the pillow, grasping tightly its ends.
“I can still smell you in these sheets” Lilith’s tears began to drench the pillows’ cotton through its cover.
Her dark hair was tangled as she lifts her upper body, pressing the mattress down. Her eyes puffed to a pinkish hue, she needed to rest her eyes. But she could not rest on this bed, not on this one.
It will only bring her more tears. She got up, and trudge, her side buttocks landed on the ground.
Were my legs shaking? Have my bones gone weak? She wondered upon falling on the floor.
The tile was cold. Will it bruise? she laid on the cold hard ground.
Lilith then tried to move but her knees does not listen to her command, she crawled dragging her limpy body. Her dress was rather heavy, she gave up and dropped her head on the tiled floor,
“what am I doing?” she got a hold of herself at last.
The energy came rising to her body, both knees on the floor kneeling and slowly got her knees straight up. Lilith’s eyes caught a glimpse of papers on the ground, she walked and picked it up. She read it once again, and a hope glistened her eyes.
It was merely words written on a piece of paper, but those inked words gave her hope and then came to promise Gerald, in his death,
“I will treasure everything you left to me” pressing the very papers close to her heart.
A promise was done, in her heart she engraved the words she had said, not to fail him nor break the promise she uttered.
Lilith nudges her feet to walk into a straight line, to the door. She took a steamy bath, laid on the tub, on her back, the water swam on her body. Warm.
The liquid had scrawled on her freckled skin, from body to face, to her hair.
The water dwells on her dark hair, it straightens and gave less volume to it. Her eyes fell shut and rested her naked body underwater, in the tub. There she pondered, what could be the things that her husband would want her to do.
Something strikes her thought. She grabbed the edges of the tub splashing the water out, and making it wave wildly,
“The mansion” she murmured.
“Where was it, again?” her face tilted to the side imitating a loose bent screw on a board.
Like a waterfall from a mountain, the water dropped back to the tub as she rose, lifting her knees out and the other. Her slender limbs swayed to get the towel that hangs on the rail.
Damping her gaudy body with the cotton white towel and spiralling it around drenched hair. She reached for the robe beside the washbasin and covered her feline body.
Her hand tapped lightly on her side jaw; she could feel the bones that hide behind her skin. She shifted her hand under her eyes, there were lines of previous grief, she looked at the mirror and saw the traces of sorrow that her husband left her.
Lilith sighed to her sight, “This is not what he fell in love with”
She opened the rim of a base, of something rounded and small. A cream. Smearing the white substance onto her index to ring finger, she pasted the cream to her forehead down to the chin.
Damping it on her face, it left a ghostly image in the mirror, her face was whiter than the rest of her body.
A sight of beauty will prevail soon.
Lilith left the mirror and out the bathroom, her robe tie swayed as she shifted her legs to walk, to the bed once again. White, huge and fluffy it seemed, but for Lilith were now a bed of tears.
She laid and stared to the ceiling, she felt the clumping of the substance on her face, the cream was cold but not iced, it was heavy but not the weigh of a book.
She laid and had her eyes closed, for a few minutes she wondered what to do with the rest of her time, living without her life, Gerald. What to better make of the money he had saved up, the mansion he had left her and the car that he owned.
Charity perhaps? Donation to the poor? Start a business rather? She kept in mind all of these after a lot of thinking. All choices were stored as her option, but then what could she do, a promise to the dead must not be broken.
