Rainbow Fragments

Pink. Blue. Purple. So many other colours.

I think the sun catcher finally stopped being about you.

The room smells and looks different, but the colours still find me.

Lying here, I remember buying a sun catcher 5 summers ago because you said the rainbows made every ordinary room look magical. It made what was once our room look magical.

I remember every afternoon, lying by your side. We'd pretend the blues belonged to me because it always landed on the sleeve of my cozy hoodie, and the pink belonged to you because it found your face—your kissable lips first.

I sigh, breathing in. I thought moments like that meant something.

When you left, I kept expecting the colours to disappear too.

Instead, I would press my forehead to the window, staring at the empty driveway. The colours would hit me and splay on the walls, the bed, and the bookshelves. The colours kept showing up without asking whether I was ready for them. Never asking, like it ever could.

In autumn, the rainbow colours from the sun catcher dimmed. The colours lasted minutes instead of hours after coming home. Sometimes, I'd catch them out of the corner of my eye and, for a moment, think you'd walked past the doorway with that teasing, knowing glance of yours. Thankfully, it always rained in October. Those days were far and few between. My sanity, almost lost.

Then came winter. And winter was worse.

Cloudy weeks. Long nights. Lonely nights; barely any light.

Funny thing is, I had taken it down. Rubbing off the collected dust on the crystals, realizing I had gone almost a full year without touching it. Thinking that might've been the reason it lost its brilliance, but it was just because it was winter.

I remember asking myself then. Had it been that long?

I laughed. Not sure if my voice cracked finally with grief that had been tucked away. It made me realize that the polished crystal was never the problem. Just the clouds in the sky blocking out the light.

I had laughed miserably when I realized. It was never broken. There just wasn't enough sun.

It was just a pretty faceted piece I hung back in place, in front of the window. I stared until the slight glimmers of faint colours brushed the walls. I had wondered then if I should let it remain. After all, it had become my source of sadness.

I pushed on, just thinking it was the winter blues.

Spring finally arrived before I had noticed it. I still liked the sun catcher, but I couldn't have it in the room anymore. So I moved it. I moved it to the living room of what was once our home.

A stripe of green on the coffee table. Yellow on the teacup rim. Orange landed where the cat tower used to be.

I thought I'd panic. But for the first time, in a long time, I found myself watching the colours without wondering what you would've said about them.

I just sat back on the couch and watched.

It's probably the strangest thing about reminiscing. Nostalgia.

You don't wake up one day and suddenly become free of it. Like a cold snap, it's the linchpin of a bomb you think you have to hunker down and hold on to. When it finally hits you and your body tells you to let go, it's done and finally over.

Things settle, and then there's normalcy again.

It finally turns into one quiet afternoon where the light comes through and gets caught in the sun catcher's faceted crystals. It breaks into a hundred impossible colours, and the first thought isn't the name that had lingered on my lips for so long.

Finally, relief washes over. The sun catcher still hangs, and it's still waiting for the sun.

The difference?

The colours still find me. They just no longer arrive carrying the memory of you.