For Life or Love?

“What are you thinking?”
Myra whispered to me, lying beside me on the bed, as I lay there beside her, both of us naked and covered in the purple bed sheet, me playing with the blades of her silky black hairs and at times caressing her soft white cheeks and her strawberry lips.
“Nothing”, I replied.
I could hear the seagulls and the waves crashing against the shore. The sunlight slithered through the window, passing through the white curtains, highlighting the crimson coloured walls of the room, and getting pierced by the blades of the ceiling fan. It fell on her face, illuminating like the yellow flames of a candle certain portions of her face. Her saphire eyes amplified the golden glow of the morning and twinkled brighter than the brightest of the stars.
“What are you thinking?”, I questioned her.
“I’m thinking ‘what are you thinking’”, she chuckled and drew forward to plant a gentle kiss on my lips. I could feel the wetness of them, the sweet flavor like nectar of her saliva, just like it had been the night before, and the night before and the many nights before.
The sunlight basked the room and there it kindled a certain warmth; I could feel it as she rested her head on my shoulder and I embraced her within my arms and smooched her. She fiddled with my shaggy hairs and we kept on kissing. She mounted on me — we still under the blanket and I could see her perfect round breasts and her tiny nipples that despite the warmness of the room were erect like a winter night; and the blanket perfectly covered her bare back, dropping from her shoulders all the way to her feet, and above me formed a shelter like an igloo.
“I need to go”, Myra said softly.
“I only wished you could stay a little while longer.”
“I did, and I still would have if I could. But the time isn’t ours anymore.”
A warm breeze blew in, raising the curtains and breaking my trance, and in that moment, she was gone — gone like a leave in the tropical wind. The blanket that till then sheltered her back fell on me and she was there no more, like it had been for almost a year.
I knew I had fucked up the perfect thing between us — badly. We had been together for almost three years and now I was all alone, in this beach shack, lying on this bed, in this warm tropical sun, while she was there with another guy, a businessman as far as I remember — Bill, his name was.
I got up, put on my shorts, sat at the edge of my bed and looked for the pack of cigarettes that lay beside me on the lamp table. I took one out and lit it to calm my nerves — to suffocate to death the feeling of missing her that so kindled vigorously within me. I hadn’t written anything good in nearly three years; the last date I can remember I wrote something worth selling was on 8th of October, the day she slipped away from me and I just stood there letting her go, unable to do anything; and since then I had been schizophreniac about her — I see her everywhere, with me, beside me, every where, every time; but I know she isn’t there, that’s just her mirage, my nostalgia, making me feel that things were better in the past, though they weren’t.
I stood up, went to my table where lay my typewriter and poured myself a drink and gulped it down in one go. I set up the paper on my typer and poured myself another one and attempted to write anything worthy but couldn’t. I punched the words “Myra Myra Myra…” again and again and again.
“It’s not going to help”, I heard a familiar voice calling for me, coming from my bed behind my back.
“Why?”, I asked to the familiar beautiful woman that lay there, covered in the same purple sheet, on the bed.
“You couldn’t keep me when all I wanted was you.”
“I know I fucked up. Can’t I get one more chance?”
“It’s late…it’s too late. Today is my wedding with Bill, don’t you remember?”
“I didn’t want to.”
“Perhaps I would like to see you for one last time.”
“You know what I miss about you the most?”, I asked her spectre.
“What?”
“Your eyes and how they would kill me every time you looked at me, and your smell. I miss your smell. When you left I couldn’t wash the sheets because I didn’t wanna lose that completely…you. It fucked me for a long time because I would wake up and smell you and I would think you were there; my heart would break all over again.”
She laughed.
“If I can make you laugh like that then why can’t we be together?”, I whispered.
The sound of waves crashing vehemently on the rocks brought me back to my table and to my typewriter. I looked at the paper and all there was were the words “Myra” punched all over, just like I had been doing since the past year. I rolled out the paper and crushed it into a ball and threw it.
We loved each other too much, too much, and I think we made a mistake of getting it right the first time and that put an insane amount of pressure on us to keep it going and I buckled.
I looked up at the clock and saw it striking eleven o’clock. Her wedding was after an hour.
I dressed up, put on my finest black suit, but I didn’t shower. I wanted the smell of her from the sheets to be with me for one last time.
I drove to the chapel where her wedding was to be. I saw her dressed in her white gown that we once went together to shop for. “I’ll love to wear that when I marry you”, I remembered her saying, and I also remembered her crying away from me days later. But now she looked happy with an invigorating smile on her face. I felt good too for a moment there — seeing her happy was the only thing I had desired from my whole life. Bill stood there, waiting for her, on the stage.
For a moment I looked from a distance whether she would search for me in the crowd, to catch a glimpse of me for the last time, but she didn’t. She didn’t want me anymore. Maybe the whole time I was the only hurdle in her life.
I drove away to the nearest pharmacy and bought some drugs — some sleeping pills and other stuffs. I went to the liquor store and got me a fifth of whisky. I drove back to my home.
I went to table and sat there on my chair and rolled another paper on my typewriter, and poured myself the fifth up to the brim of my glass and unloaded into it the whole pack of pills I had just bought.
I wrote
If I could cry,
hush me.
If I could crumble,
build me.
If I could walk,
walk with me.
If I could love,
love me.
If I could err,
forgive me.
If I could drift,
chain me.
If I could come back,
bring me.
If I could stay,
hold me.
If I could live,
be with me.
I lit a smoke and got ready to gulp down the glass in one go. I heard a whisper from my back.
“For life or love?”, Myra asked.
“For myself”, I answered, and drank.
The sun had set. The night had kicked in. It got dark, too dark to see.
