Never Let Me Go

 

Call me Skye. I have spent most of my life walking beside death, though I did not know its shape at first. I was six when the sickness came for her, creeping and silent, a shadow that stretched across our small, fragile world. I was seven when it came for another, sudden, unannounced, and absolute—my grandmother, asleep one night and never waking. I pressed my small hands to her stillness and tried to will her to breathe, tried to bargain with the emptiness that had taken her, and the world continued, indifferent. I did not understand it. I do not understand it. I do not understand death.

 

I have not learned its rules. I have not learned its language. I have only felt its weight pressing against me, pressing through me, pressing into the small chambers of my heart until I am hollow and full at the same time. It circles, it waits, it watches. Sometimes I imagine it as a dark sea, stretching farther than I can see, swallowing all the warmth and leaving only currents that pull me down, that leave me breathless, that whisper and whisper and whisper until I cannot hear anything else.

 

I do not understand why it comes. I do not understand why it takes some and spares others, why it drifts gently for some and strikes suddenly for others, why it can be patient and merciless at once. I do not understand how life can continue, how the sun can rise and children can laugh and birds can sing while inside my chest, the tide of fear rises higher with every heartbeat, and my small hands shake with the knowledge of its inevitability.

 

Sometimes, when the air is quiet and the night presses against the windows like a hand, I press my face into her shoulder and imagine that if I memorize enough—if I memorize her warmth, her pulse, the faint tremor in her hands—I can hold the tide at bay. I whisper, “Never let me go,” into the dark, and the words float in the space between us, fragile as a candle flame in the wind. And she smiles, fragile as light over water, and says, “I’m right here, Skye.” And for a moment, I believe it will always be enough, that love will anchor us against the rising tide. But I feel the distance growing, small at first, then widening, swelling, until the space between us feels like the sea itself, deep and unending.

 

I am fifteen, yet I have spent nearly a decade living beside death. I have counted years not in birthdays but in breaths, in tremors, in coughs, in the slow, patient advance of something I cannot name or fight. I do not understand it. I have tried to map it, to reason with it, to plead with it, but it does not respond. It does not care. It circles. It waits. It moves silently, unseen, and it will not be hurried.

 

Sometimes I imagine it as a whale beneath the waves, black and immense, circling beneath the surface, patient, gliding, waiting. I imagine that I am a child in a boat, holding on to the edges with small, desperate hands, and the world tilts, and the waves rise, and I cannot reach the shore, and I cannot reach her. I have tried to fight it with love, with prayer, with memorizing every heartbeat, every curve of her smile, every sound of her breathing, every warmth of her hand pressed against mine. But the whale does not tire. The whale does not forgive. It does not negotiate. It waits. Always, it waits.

 

I have known the suddenness of loss. I have known its quiet patience. I have known the hollow silence that follows. When I was seven, my grandmother died in her sleep, and I pressed my small hands to her chest, willing it to beat, willing it to answer me, willing her to speak to me again. And she did not. And I did not understand why. I pressed my small body against her, whispered into her ears, begged for her warmth, her life, her pulse, and the world continued as if nothing had happened. And I learned, slowly, that grief could arrive without warning, that the absence of life could be total, that death was patient, merciless, and silent.

 

I have lived with it ever since. I have lived with it in tremors, in coughs, in silent rooms, in quiet nights, in whispered prayers. I have pressed my face to warmth and memorized it, whispered into the dark: Never let me go. I have done this so many times that I feel it in my bones, that it has shaped the rhythm of my life. The shadow has been my constant companion, and I do not yet understand why it exists, why it moves as it does, why it is allowed to persist while the world continues, full of light and sound, oblivious to its patient circling.

 

I am fifteen. And I do not understand death. I do not understand why it comes. I do not understand why it comes slowly for some, swiftly for others, why it can be patient, why it can be silent, why it can be so absolute. I do not understand how it moves like the tide, how it drifts through lives, how it changes everything and yet nothing at all, how it circles and circles and waits, and waits, and waits.

 

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine the world as endless waves, and I am a child clinging to the deck of a ship I cannot steer, and the leviathan circles below, black and immense, patient and silent, and I press my hands to her shoulders and memorize the warmth, and whisper, Never let me go.

 

Sometimes I feel the hollowness in my chest, a space carved by absence, by loss, by the inevitability I cannot name. I feel it in the quiet moments, in the mundane moments, in the way the wind moves through the trees, in the way the air tastes, in the way the world seems to continue as if nothing has happened, as if death is not always waiting, as if absence is not always circling just beneath the surface.

 

And yet I press on. I continue. I memorize, I whisper, I cling. Because I do not yet understand. I do not understand death. I do not understand why it comes or why it waits. I do not understand why it is allowed to take and leave, to circle, to linger, to vanish. I do not understand how life continues in its bright, careless rhythm while I carry the weight of its inevitability like a small, desperate sailboat at the mercy of a dark sea.

 

I am Skye. I do not understand death. I have felt it. I have lived with it. I have whispered into it. I have memorized, clung, loved. And for now, for as long as I am allowed, I hold on.