For A Minute
People often talk about great love, the sheer, raw, indelible force of it. There’s that kind of love that makes you realize it’s good to be alive—that it’s good to breathe, the kind that makes you wonder what you’d have been like without their presence. They say it carves you, molds you, shapes you into something entirely new, and utterly fantastic.
Maybe they were right.
I have never known to describe it, but if walls could speak, they’d be able to tell people better. If you asked the paint chipping from the walls of our home, you’d be able to see that a good life has lived in those rooms. But words, I’ve never been good at them.
Maybe love isn’t meant to be spoken of at all. Perhaps it was always meant to be felt—skin to skin, lips to lips, like a patch of sunlight to sit on a cold day, or rainfall on your palms falling like crystals from the sky. I have felt it, though. In the way her fingers brush mine, in the way she moves her body against my body, like tendrils sheathed into the petals of my thighs. The way she and I entwined, like grapevine threads, ever so bearing, ever so sweet, and equally as painful.
They tell you about love in all its glory. But no on really tells you that the absence of it is just as powerful, just as unforgiving. No one tells you that grief comes in its own universe, vast as far as galaxies can stretch, like chasing for stars that weren’t really there. Time would unfold itself, twist reality, burrowed under the weight of your pain and your longing.
They say love withstands time, that it shouldn’t break.
But it does break, and when it does, it leaves splinters, and it cuts, and it makes you bleed. I never believed it until that day I lost her.
Francesca.
My Dear Francesca. My enigma, my poetry. Her beauty delights what I don’t understand; she was spectral, like air. I always reach out to her, to her face, her skin, the delightful feeling of her cheeks against my knuckles. Francesca was one of a kind, the Tulip that stands out amongst fields of roses. She’s bright and beautiful; everything about her is a perfect harmony.
She was the lighthouse to my fractured ocean, my Francesca. My love who I thought could never break.
Until it did.
“Just stop, Michaela!” Francesca’s voice was a crack through their dimly lit flat, the faint yellow light barely bright above their heads. It was blinding still, considering the darkness that was looming around their relationship. “You always do this! You never really want to talk about things you just do them without even consulting me.”
“That is not fair.” Michaela shot back, her voice trembling, crossing bridges between heartache and anger. “I’m trying to do this for us, to keep us together. But maybe you do not even care enough to try.”
Francesca flinched, turning away. The silence that came after was deafening, it was as loud as collisions, as thunderstorms, but ever so relentless.
“I cannot do this right now,” Francesca whispered, grabbing her coat from the chair. “I need…I need to breathe.”
“Francesca, wait. Don’t leave. Not like this.”
But the door had already shut behind her.
The storm outside had been brewing all day, the sky was restless and thick with movement. Rain lashed and crashed against the windows as Michaela stood by the doorway, not having left her position since Francesca left.
She wanted to let her go, to give them both space. But the fear gnawed at her; it was so sharp, it stung like a wound kissed by salt. The idea of losing her was too much to bear, she feels as though the weight of it might crush her entirely. Francesca was her life, is her life. She was the anchor to her endless storm, the warmth to every blizzard that may come their way.
They were tied by panoramic threads; even when the world threatened to pull them apart, they pull each other back. Michaela knew they were stronger than this.
Francesca grabbed her phone, her hands shaking.
Flight 247 – Departing in 2 hours
Francesca was leaving.
Without another thought, Michaela raced out the door. She did not care about the storm. She did not care about the warnings. She only cared about getting to Francesca.
I’m coming, my love. She said to herself.
The airport was chaos. The storm had grown worse, and flights were being delayed, rerouted, and canceled entirely. But Michaela didn’t care. She just wanted to get to her. She searched for every terminal, every gate, panic rising in her chest like a tidal wave.
Then, she saw her.
Francesca sat alone by Gate 17, her head resting against the window, watching the rain patter against the glass. She looked utterly beautiful despite the sorrow that must have been threatening her peace after their argument. She looked radiant, and all worth it.
“Francesca!”
Francesca turned, eyes widening in shock.
“Michaela, what are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t let you leave,” Michaela said, breathless, her hair damp from the rain. “Not like this.”
Francesca’s eyes softened, and she instinctively took off her jacket and wrapped it over Francesca’s freezing body. But before Francesca could respond, the intercom crackled to life.
“Flight 247 is now boarding.”
Michaela’s heart pounded.
“Don’t get on that plane,” she whispered, voice barely audible amongst the swarm of humans running along the airport, their luggage rolling aggressively against the cold floors, the violent storm outside, seeping in like an unwanted guest.
“Michaela, I—”
But the moment never finished.
A deafening clap of thunder shook the building. The lights flickered. Then, the unmistakable sound of sirens. People screamed, then a flash of blinding white light set across their visions, and then—
Nothing.
Michaela woke up to silence.
The airport was gone. The storm was gone. The world felt wrong. Something definitely shifted, the air felt palpable but it was thick, and heavy, heavy with the unusual feeling of a vortex, a pit taking residence in her stomach, to which it has no ground—just endless falling.
“Francesca?” she whispered into the emptiness, panic clawing in her throat. There was the kind of silence she’d never witnessed. Usually, even when Francesca was not home, she felt somewhat comforted knowing she would always be back. There was always traces of her scent everywhere—Lilacs, Vanilla, fresh, so sweet and effervescent, like bath salts that pricked your skin at first touch but melted into calmness soon after.
Francesca was that feeling—the initial sting, the lingering comfort. Even when she wasn’t in the room, Michaela felt her.
But this, this was different.
The silence didn’t feel temporary. It wasn’t soft, it wasn’t comforting. It was vast, it was hollow, it was a tensile ache that spread across every inch of Michaela’s chest.
She stumbled forward, clutching the wall for balance, as if expecting Francesca to suddenly appear, smiling softly at her, asking her why she looked so lost, so……so much in pain. But not even a faint sound of her breath echoed in the room, not even in Michaela’s imagination.
There was nothing.
Time has lost its shape here. She could have been suspended for seconds, hours, days; it was impossible to tell. In that place, memory became porous, slippery as a wet rock, The flight, the storm
Michaela’s breath quickened, ragged and uneven. She turned the corner and stumbled into a small, cold room. The floor beneath her was linoleum, pale and warm. The walls were bare, institutional, and gleaming slightly under fluorescent lights. There was a table nearby. On it lay a pamphlet, pristine and incongruous in this clinical void.
In loving memory of Francesca Bridgerton
Michaela stared at the name, a little longer than she’d hoped. She was washed with disbelief, her mind stuttered over the letters, spelling out a name she dared not say under such circumstances—because they were written in a language she could not understand.
Francesca.
Her Francesca.
Michaela’s stomach twisted. The air in the room had changed, there was now a heavy, thick, atmosphere digging into her skin.
Her knees have now met the cold floors in a harsh thump, nothing has registered. Michaela resisted what come next if she acknowledged what was happening.
But her ears rang. The words blurred. There was a dull, slow pulse at the back of her skull, plummeting her every senses and there was a terrible pressure pressing onto it, like something was about to cave in.
She flipped the pamphlet with numb fingers.
Flight 247. October 14th.
Her muscled sinched against her throat.
A plane crash.
The memory hit her through her ears, impaling the bones of her skull, striking her sideways.
I told her not to get on that plane. Michaela mumbled to herself.
The room crumpled like paper, warped into something so thin and fragile as if reality itself had been a construction site, a flimsy set piece, folding in on itself. The nerves in her eyes started to hurt as her vision darkened.
Francesca is dead.
Dead.
Grief then, she learned, was not loud. It was not a busy city agitating your peace, not a telecom announcing their arrival, not a storm breaking against glass. It was not swift nor was it tardy. It did not crash into the room like a gust of wind, did not demand attention the way tragedy often does.
It was not a cinematic revelation that people pretended to understand through their dramatic despair.
Grief was quiet.
It establishes itself in the smallest things. The untouched toothbrush by the sink. The indentation on the pillow beside hers. The mail unopened. She felt as though the universe was making a joke out of her.
Days passed in strange, monotone ways. There was a funeral. People cried. Some people handed her a cup of tea.
They spoke of her name in whispers, the pity in their voices crawled through her spine like an unwanted guest, overstaying their welcome. She did not need their pity. She did not need the reminder that she is now alone.
The pretenders shed more tears than she did. But she didn’t, she didn’t respond. She didn’t speak at all.
She did think about crying often, she tried, in the dead space between her sleep and consciousness, but they never came.
She just felt like a shell; she was numb and empty, like reaching dust at the bottom of a vase in all its hollowness. A vessel long since drained. Carved out with brutal precision, making room for weightless ache.
She was just a body.
She was alone now. In the confines of her bedroom. Though, she is reminded that it is now just her bedroom and not hers and Francesca’s.
It was very late when she finally said the words.
“She’s dead.”
She said it to the walls. To their empty living room.
It didn’t sound real.
She didn’t feel real.
It was now midnight, and Michaela decided to have coffee. She made herself a bland cup of bitter liquid and sat by the window. Michaela looked out, and she saw that the world remained unchanged. The people outside walked in ferocious intent, they’re all headed somewhere, having something to look forward to.
It was as if the sky’s tapestry was mocking her, the stars refused to make an appearance, only the moon’s tinge of light shone in the crevices of the harrowing ether and would not make an exception for her on this one night.
Her fingers caressed the handle of a porcelain mug she took it upon her lips, letting the nutty steam infiltrate her nostrils and penetrate her faucets in earthy sensation.
It was futile anyway, no amount of caffeine has truly stood in the way between her and her steady unconsciousness, she had never had a problem with the mechanics of sleeping, it’s the physical exertion of pulling the plug on her ever-awake mind that she needed help with, it felt like a Godly punishment brought upon her—thinking.
The bestrew of thoughts scattered like shards of glass mercilessly taking blight upon her placidness. During these times, she desperately asks the Gods or whoever’s up there to make it stop.
The Gods must be deaf.
Her grief, once was completely sorrowful, has now metamorphosed into anger.
There was a terrible, crippling anguish crawling through her arms as she set down her coffee mug, every sip she took is time descending from her buttery hands, every second slipping is a second more of where Francesca wasn’t.
She looked through the windows again, making note of their flat, and its location. It was an old building, it had creaky stairs and rodents running around the rails, but she always liked where she was, she and Francesca did, because it was right in the middle of the busy street, they saw everyone, they could get mad at everyone with a view like this.
The people walking by, they’re her companions, each passerby a fleeting character in her private play. From her perch, she observed the intricacies of human interaction, the subtle nuances that helps understand our existence.
Inside this flat, she has crafted a refuge that mirrored her own psyche—a sanctuary of constrictions. But right now, there was not an ounce of pleasure or delight in her bones, because she realized that it was the worst part of it all.
That the world had continued. Without her. Without Francesca.
Now, the world has become a bitter pill she’d grown to despise. Her vibrant spirit was nowhere to be found, nothing but a veil of cynicism and disdain. Each day, she will witness the relentless parade of humanity, her face written with their own brand of suffering and pretense. The masks they wore, the superficial smiles, and empty pleasantries all served as painful reminders of the sadness that polluted every corner of her body.
She wanted to scream. To break something. To rewind time.
But it was no use.
Sleep, she decided, is something she should at least try accomplishing because at least maybe in her dreams, Francesca will show up, maybe there, Francesca is alive and warm. Maybe the state of her reverie is where Francesca stood before her.
So then, Michaela descended into the abyss, into the prism of sleep, hoping to find her face in translucence.
Please come back to me. She pled to no one in particular.