Author: Inshal Kabeer Title of Work: Our Limited Time The bench was cold, the night dark. She leaned up against him, quiet. The thing was, after his diagnosis, the very moments she once enjoyed had become heavy. Not sad exactly, and certainly not serious, but… significant.
She was forced to contend with every second that passed now, forced to hold it in her hand, weigh it and inevitably, leave it behind for the next. Time hadn’t been like that before. Limited. Obvious.
The constant chanting in her voice didn’t leave. You have one second less now, another second less, another… What will you regret? How much more time do you have? How much will you miss him, how much will it hurt? How can you make what little you have with him enough?
“You’re probably thinking how you should have left that day,” he whispered.
She turned her head, and met his eyes. He’d been watching her a while now. Did he see the despair in her face, the grief she was pushing away to try and enjoy what she had?
“What?”
The side of his thumb grazed down her cheek. She wanted to kiss him, let her lips capture him and devour time whole. Better yet, stop it altogether.
“You could be at Disneyland with another… another man. You could be happy instead of sitting here in the cold pretending you are.”
“And—“
“You should be with someone that brings a smile to your face, lights up your soul the way I used to. Not with somebody that can’t even go to the toilet on his own.”
She knew the words were coming from a deep place of pain inside him. She knew she should tell him how much he meant to her, and reassure him that she wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.
But the truth was that it hurt for her too. Not only the fact of their circumstances, because of course that hurt… but the fact that he was doubting her now. After everything, everything, this was what he said.
That she should just leave.
“If you stopped pitying yourself for five minutes, maybe you’d realize how much I love you,” she snapped, voice rising. “And fucking stop telling me what I should or should not be doing, okay? We’ve long crossed that bridge—I’m your wife for God’s sake! Do not talk to me about some other mystery man when the one I love is sitting right here, in front of me.” Dying.
“Stop pitying myself?” He asked, “Stop pitying myself? I’m dying!”
“Well, yes. I know that!” He could say the word more easily than her. Dying. Maybe he’d made his peace with it when she wasn’t looking. But the insecurity of his words only moments earlier made her doubt it.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, breath hanging in the air. “I’m sorry. Are you mad?”
She sat up straighter to place her forehead against his. The seconds were grains of sand, marbles clinking in her mind. She wanted to snatch at them, lock them up tight in her heart so that he would never have to leave. But time slipped past, indifferent, inevitable.
“No. I’m not mad.” Perhaps if they had more time, she would be. But then the question would never have arisen in the first place.
“I love you,” he said, wincing. Every extra moment, every pause in time, those words came to fill in. As if to make up for all the future she would have in their absence.
“Disneyland does sound inviting, though,” she said, mouth quivering against his cheek. That future is not here yet. Not here, not here, marbles, you have marbles left. Living in the present had become so much harder now that it was important to.
“Really?” His cold hands reached for hers. She took his offer, leading them, slipping them under her jacket. They would kiss in a moment, and the clicking-ticking in her brain would silence at his touch. But before that, he had to know. How could he not know?
“Disneyland is the second place I’d rather be at the moment.”
“Second?” He smiled, nose scrunching the way it did when he was confused and happy. “And where’s the first?”
“Right here. Or wherever you are, really. Hopefully somewhere warmer.”
She bent his fingers from within her jacket so that his hands cupped under her collarbone, near her heart. Could he feel it beating, racing alongside the clock, pumping out love and love and time, but mostly love?
He answered the question with a silent gesture of his own. Cold lips, hot breaths. Mostly what she felt was her heart speed up, and time finally, finally,
slow down.