My ceramic heart

The shattering deafened the space around me, lulling a quiet hum as hardened clay echoed against the tiled floor. The clock's tick scraped like a student humorously dragging their fingernails down the blackboard. I knew precisely which figurine fell from my shelf. It's the law of the Universe, isn't it? Fear something enough, and it’ll happen. I understand I could grapple with a somewhat coherent description that’d make Murphy proud, but in that moment, as I trailed my eyes down to the pieces lying lifelessly, without any sound to remind me of their importance other than the ache waking within my bones. Just silence gnawed at my flesh, clawing a burning numbness from the depths of my soul.

The first thought whispers, and another follows behind, and soon I regain consciousness of my reality. A sigh slipped, exhausted, my instincts already motioning my body to the kitchen, around the island, and to the narrow closet next to the fridge.

I can fix it. It’s beyond repair. It’s broken—I can glue it back together. It’s gone. I have to try at least. It needs to be perfect again.

Before I knew it, I gathered the larger pieces into my hand, placed them on the counter, and swept everything else into the scooper. What the hell do I do with this? It’s one of a kind, and I can’t just replace it! I lift my hands in defeat. This was tomorrow’s problem.

I’ve always understood how materialistic mannerisms have come to play in our day-to-day lives, because each year there’s something better. I know how the mind doesn’t even process the damage, for it has already found a replacement to fill the hollowness.

But when it comes to more sentimental values, the delicate connections between our hearts and another, and the importance one finds in the small gifts given from those we love, how quickly our brains short-circuit. It is intriguing, to say the least, how we still follow our routines despite the loss, as if the thing still occupies space among us, or how we speak, move, behave almost zombie-like. Because of all the things our mind entertains, a loss of something dear truly is unfathomable. To think that we know we have approaching inevitability, yet we attach immortality to those we love—to the things we cherish and hold dear to our hearts. Funny isn’t it, how I told myself it’s tomorrow’s problem, but here I am, recognising similar thought patterns as those when I was a child, sitting in the high chair and staring at the pieces. How did this happen? I made sure it’s in a secure spot on the shelf—not too high, not too low, just perfect. It was perfectly safe, so how could it just fall? The screen of my phone lights, my father’s chiding message lining a soft smile, and I’ll admit, four-fifteen am is early, especially for him. But it’s soothing to know I’m not alone. I’ve never been physically, yet this numbness smoulders hotter than it ever has. My father’s scolding pings a second message of reassurance, that these things happen and that I shouldn’t partake in anything my thoughts have to say right now. Unfortunately, it was a tad too late as I strode with a stepladder in hand towards the shelf, the ceiling light buzzing from sudden use after favouring the smaller, more ambient lighting, as my schoolkids would say.

I huffed. My jaw set as I found nothing that could’ve pushed the ceramic off. It hasn’t even moved—nothing has moved, and I curl into myself at how horrendously dusty it is. I step down harshly, fingers curled into my palms. It’s my own negligence of the matter. When I built these shelves, I made some sort of oath to never come near them, and I realise now how crazy I must’ve been—and still am when I host—to my friends when I would lose my temper if one of them leaned onto it or so much as grazed it from a millimetre distance. But still, how did it fall?

My parents and I decided to go to the farmer’s market. My mother said that a good cup of coffee and a treat would help, as we could look for something to fill the space. My father added that we could look around to see if someone could help. But both were pointless as I ran the pad of my thumb over the elephant’s trunk, the coffee coating my tongue dusted like sour cotton, and my heart anchored heavily, each thrum snatching my breath from my lungs. Throughout the morning, I caught glimpses of shared worry between my parents, their sorrow tinted deeply within their shaded green eyes. I couldn’t bring myself to care, as my brain dedicated every ounce of itself to remember what coffee should taste like; the swirl of black liquid oozing nuttiness and a touch of maple sweetness softening the ferocity with which each day passes, or how golden strips run from the machine as you’ve managed the perfect ratio, pouring decadant cups for you and whoever owns the second. Two cups, always taken in pairs, as with everything that has consumed my life. Two croissants; one chocolate, the other almond. Two waters; one icy and the other room temperature. Two pillows; one fluffy, while the other is firm enough to hold the weight of a sleeping head. Two pairs of slippers stacked at the entrance of my home, along with two key holders and two pairs of house keys.

And strange—to think—how quickly two becomes one, though the missing piece never disappears, as all these ‘pairs’ are still attached, still engraved into my bones. A singular feeling swallowing everything else I’ve felt, becoming all that I felt, like a life before this void seized existence. The head of the elephant, beautifully snapped in half, buzzed in my hand, grew cold and light. I bit my lip to prevent my chin from wrinkling at the thought of how it mimics me—mocks me, really, if I wanted to be shallow. Irrespective of both, I traced the crooked ridges, peculiar to the sharpness softening the more I brush over it, yet reminding my skin of what isn’t there with reddened dents slowly bouncing back.

My eyes instinctively darted to where the elephant ceramic was, much like I would reach for a second cup, or give the chocolate croissant to whoever passes me first, or how the bottle of icy water is left forgotten until it reaches my preference, or how I would still puff your pillow after another morning of sliding my hand across the bed to nothingness. The silence of my home growled viciously, the hollowness glaring sympathetically as if apologising yet agreeing with the behaviour. I scoffed. How could an inanimate object, such as a shelf, know what it feels like? How could the house possibly understand the emptiness I carry?

‘How did it fall?’ I yelled, and my parents startled. How did we miss the signs of his declining health? We had everything under control. Everything was perfect. And then it wasn’t. He slipped through my fingers so quickly, as if every possible explanation and proof of why time’s existence stopped when it came to him.

I fist the elephant’s head tightly, my knuckles turning white as my breath deepened. The house does mourn along with the spot on the shelf because it belonged to him as much as it belonged to me—it was an extension of us, and how selfish of me to believe that I am the only one aching for his presence again, to feel his warmth, and hear his silly, irregular hums of different songs all at once.

‘The ceramic was in a safe spot?’ I lower myself onto the couch. He was fine. My husband has given the go-ahead to come home. ‘And the ceramic fell. No wind. No bug. No accidental bump. It just fell!’

My husband passed away shortly after we rushed him back to the hospital, and the structured routine I followed since then has been held together by the ceramic he gave me for Christmas, and when it shattered, so did the neatly threaded world I created within my head, unravelling one by one. The emptiness—God, the emptiness that’s rooted in everything that was his and within everything that I knew about him, from coffee to how he liked his slippers placed soles facing each other rather than the ground and on top of mine. It’s the lingering of it all that made me collapse in my father’s arms.

Now, dust still doesn’t fill the space where the elephant ceramic was, as if honouring the importance to me, but the rooms have all gotten lighter, with skies bluer and the sun shining a little brighter. The heaviness still veils the shadows and often the silence nips at my soul and tugs at my heart, but the ache doesn’t rest like frost against the windowsills. No. Instead, it's a crackle of a warm fire that—yes, some days—overwhelms my senses with longing and a sense of urgency to feel your heartbeat beneath my palm, or feel your fingernails run up and down my spine. But, on most days, it comforts me as much as your cashmere sweater once did.