I cried the first time I saw you. I thought it was just an overflow, but maybe I was also picking up on the static in the air. Ironically enough, it was at that moment that I was finally reassured, that I finally thought I was safe - at that specific moment which spelled the beginning of the end.

I got the call, and I remembered the few days I was sick.You were not even a person then. I wasn't really all that sick, it was just a little unsettling for someone who barely ever so much as got a cold. So of course it was enough for me to worry disproportionately about you, so much so that I even shed tears over the slight - no, the downright non-existent - risk it might carry for you. But then I got better, and I knew you were not the kind to give up. And you weren't. So I must have been the one to have let you down.

Somehow, it was like I knew from the beginning. I knew who you were, but wouldn't allow myself to rely on your reality until someone, anyone said I could. And that never happened.
The whole idea - is it ever anything else? - was to protect myself, and you've got to wonder, whatever good did it do? Did I really hurt any less? I have my doubts - but I don't know any other way to go about it.

Every ensuing deciding moment was filled with extreme clarity, somehow. There was no mistake and no hope. But I didn't know what to make of it. I thought I was holding my end of the bargain, making every sacrifice. And it was okay, you know. I didn't mind the sacrifices. But maybe it wasn't enough. I must have failed you. Else it wouldn't make sense.

You were tiny. You were sleeping. You were worth so much more than the empty conclusion, the answer-less explanation we were offered. So I'll readily give you the sickness, or the runs, or the travels, every nonsensical logical possibility - because that's what it takes; where there is no reason, I will make one up, in the hope that it appeases at least one of us.

Because they dismissed the blame I'm still wearing, all of them did. And I believe them, I do, but it's so much easier to blame myself than to bear the void.