A Summer In Black by Wardha Jawdat (websites to read books for free txt) 📕

Dedicated to my dearest friend.
You know who you are and I want to honor you for being who you are, for now, and forever.
Thanks for being there.

W. J.

I

It's been a while since I’ve done this: looked into myself, and the reason for that maybe, is that I’ve been too scared to do it.
Man is a positive being in essence…those who aren't, fall prey to their own self and self destruct. We have been, and always will be, our own worst enemy.
The worst nightmare that we’ll ever have is of ourselves; in a fit of madness, throwing away all that we have consciously worked towards. Yes, that is any man's worst nightmare…the anger that feeling of profound blinding rage and ache, which numbs one to the world and pushes one towards the edge of sanity.
I've had moments such as these. Moments when sanity lay in a twisted heap at my heels and I towered over it like a tyrant, a madman; a plunderer of my own innocence and identity.

II

This was the summer of 1980.

I fell in love…
with an idea. I call him that because, looking at the present, that is all he really has become or maybe, even now, my mind is too angry to accept him as anything more than unreal; all the glory that my mind ascribed to him...that halo over his head, all that vigor with which he loved me…all: not real, but a figment of my exaggerated awareness of him. How many times have we done that…not been able to see the real man but the "idea" of him? Not really looked into the eyes in search of the soul but emptied our own soul in a search for the others'.
I can't remember his faults anymore and that, in itself, is a rude awakening for it sings to me of my own illness, my own trance-like state in which I had chosen to dwell during that summer long ago and every summer that followed since then...the sun, the heat, the aroma of that man, were all simply a


castle, I built upon the beach of fantasy island. And then, when the tides rolled in, I had nothing more to show for the years of ache but a faceless stump where the romance had once danced, only to be wiped cruelly away.

III

I couldn't believe, or to be shamefully accurate, I chose not to believe the depth of my ache when he left. To write of it is to actually invite the ache

back into my heart, to open up doors into a dark place, where a part of soul lies amputated from the rest of me.
The hurt never dies; it just fades a little like the print of your cruel stepdad's portrait that's lain in the heat of the summer air too long. It just fades, ever so slightly, the sharp edges may have the blood-drawing sharpness tempered just that little bit, so that you think

you can handle it again. But you never really do. Never quite have the courage to...to pick it up again and really look into it. The hurt


just lies there pulsating, gentler and gentler as the years go by , but never quite goes away. It assails you in those mellow hours after a party or the wee hours of the night when you want to sleep and escape what you know is always lying in wait at the other side of midnight. Those are the hours of pain, the realm of the haunted souls to where you can't help but return in that last attempt to maybe salvage what’s left of your sanity.

IV

One never really forgives, does one? No, it's a lie if you've ever said it to anyone...if you ever even tried. I never forgave...couldn't ...a part of me was always too angry to, and a part, too ashamed to. I guess I feared that if I forgave him I would no longer have an object to hate and blame when the night came upon me and the loneliness rose like acid bile into my throat.
I feared not being able to project that hate onto someone other my own shadow. I was guilty of a


crime against my self-preservation. I was guilty of a crime against my passion. I was guilty of giving too much for too long...and for me that was a heinous crime...for when the conscience lay siege to the soul I had no answers...no defenses against those damning questions:"why?"..."Why did I love you so much?"..."Why did you have to leave me and go?"
One never has an answer for it all...for why you chose to do this to your own sacred self. Your own trusting soul...why did you choose the plague that would damn you for all your existence? Why did you not choose to stay above the begging and the beseeching; the crying and the lamenting, the pathetic driving around upon unknown streets in search of a name, a face, a ghost. No! I cannot forgive him for making me fall in love. I cannot forgive him for making me feel this helpless…this tragically forsaken by every man.

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V

Ah! The sun has shone down upon me countless times since you've been gone and the summer breeze has played with my tresses and I wish I could be a blossom upon its shoulders.
But alas! I have begun this purging and now I am doomed to see it done. It's such a feeling of nothingness, isn't it when "the one" is gone? When the mornings of frantic activity are replaced with inertia...a state of suspended animation in which you look, but do not see...you touch, but do not feel...you have hunger and yet you do not eat? That hunger is demoniac....it's that you have to escape from. That hunger,if left unchecked will feed on your very being and lick you clean from within. Oh, that hunger!I want to double over and hug myself even now as I remember how brutal it was!
That "knowing"...that knowing that you were gone and that it was all over...That last plea, that last call, that final kiss, all DONE.
The finality of that word still cripples me.


DONE, I see it in so many places and it makes my stomach contract and bite into itself. DONE, yes! We are done but then why is the pain not DONE too? Why won't it leave me...the amputation done, the soul crippled and yet the pain hungers for more. I sometimes find myself looking at the clock and abstractedly measuring time the way I used to; by the hours since you were gone…or till the time that you would return. And then I catch myself and remember the days and nights of this summer aren’t colored the same anymore. They are just a little more paler, a little more pointless than they were before. I wish to feed upon the hunger, not just feed it anymore.

VI

Today: I find myself walking towards the DVD and I know what I'm going to do. I dread my action and I know I am simply going to feel the death of soul all over again. But I am helpless against the pull...the pull you still have over me. That


attraction...morbid though it might be...is still operative at some level in my soul.

The cup in my hand is clattering upon its saucer and I place it on the table to ignore the warning my own body is trying to send to me. I find you and I play you. I wish life were as tangible as a DVD. I would never have to feel this way. I wish you were really trapped in this silver disc and I could play God with your existence every evening.
I find myself wishing I could be a child again curled up in my mother’s lap, or sleeping in the crook of my father’s long strong arm and having this be simply a nightmare from which I could wake up unhurt. Oh, I want someone to put a healing hand upon my heart and soak away this ache.
The DVD plays, I see you smiling at me, singing with me. There you are! Yet you are nowhere! I am crying. I am laughing. Is that me I hear screaming? Oh yes, it's me, screaming, because crying just doesn't seem enough anymore. Doesn't seem to be doing justice to this ache I keep feeling anymore. So I scream as I double over in front of


my TV and hug my knees till I'm sore. I scream. Why won't you hear me? My soul is breaking. It's not just about my heart anymore. My soul is breaking from the very effort of keeping you with me some more.

VII

I see our son's face. He looks like me. I know that teased you into annoyance at times. I see him and I think I should have told you that he's like you…in that senseless way in which he cracks stupid jokes and makes me laugh. He's like you. He's trying to say something to me, to comfort me and I can just see his worried eyes. And I smile as I touch his face. I hear myself say, “I’m ok”. And I see the tired smile that he gives me…he probably thinks I need help...the kind only mind numbing drugs can provide.
But no! I know my own soul. I need time. The summer will reach me. The sun will shine through the dark opacities of my irises. I shall feel the life


flowing in and around me, if not through me. I shall survive this summer. I might not live it but I shall survive it. Man,as I believe,is a positive being and he must move forth or stagnate and die.

VIII

I stand at your tombstone and I read what I had inscribed, "I loved you the day you died and I shall love you till the day I die", and wonder, how long it will be till I can stop carrying around the burden of that promise.

- End -

BOOK BY WARDHA JAWDAT

Poetry

Shades Of Grey
Known Stranger

Fiction & Writings

A Summer in Black
Writing by Numbers

Folk Tales

Enchanted Lake

Short Stories

Kat & Sable