It takes 10 minutes and twelve seconds to walk to your home from mine every day. Your sister never fails to smile at me when she opens the door. I never fail to notice that it doesn’t reach her eyes anymore.
You leave your door open an exact two point three centimeters. I don’t think you do it on purpose. There is something wrong with the wood that has left it that way. I pause one foot outside the door and listen to you cough, trying to determine how sick you feel today. I hate that every time I think you are particularly ill, I am always right.
Six months, seventeen days and fourteen hours. That is how long its been since the doctors told you, you had an illness. I sat there, listening to a man dressed in white, saying words like ‘terminal’ and ‘leukemia’, and counted the number of times he said ‘patient’ as if it were your name (Seventeen).
The blood bank says one unit is four hundred and eighty milliliters, and I watch as they put the needle into my arm to pump out the blood into a little plastic bag. It takes exactly seven minutes and twenty one seconds, because I’m holding my arm so tight. If I could give you all my blood so you could feel better for just a day, I would.
It has been nine days, twelve hours and fourteen minutes since the ambulance came for you. Six days, fifteen hours and seven minutes since the doctors told us they couldn’t help you anymore. I am counting the drips of the glucose as it goes into your arm, my body wrapped around yours, trying to pretend this is a bad dream.
You say, that I am obsessed with numbers. I want to tell you you’re wrong. My obsession is you. I say nothing. This is the first time you have laughed in one month, three weeks and two days.
*They say, that when someone dies, their body weight drops. It is not noticeable unless you have held them close while they are dying. It is just a touch. But it’s there when they leave you.
21 grams. That is the weight of a human soul.
