Renee’s Comments (group member since May 13, 2025)

Renee’s comments from the Call Me Sylvia group.

You're there when I turn the corner on any memory.
You're there with the rest of them.
I find you, crawling, through the sewage of a dream
where we once
touched.
Open my eyes and you're gone,
but inside
you're asleep
and ready
and waiting
and i'm waiting too
but why arent we
waiting together?

2.5 years and counting. There's a clock somewhere that's been watching the seconds, and a watch out there that has been lapping my tears up with each tick of the hour hand. Tick, tock, tick, tock. Grief can grow and shrink and stretch but never disappear. If I create it into something, is it better? Or does it just hurt me from angles it couldn't reach previously? Angles that I gave it?
I am not scared of death, nor am I scared of the act of dying. What terrifies me is the absence after. The empty bed. The un-played music. The remembrance that turns into nostalgia that turns into Déjà vu that turns into something you can't quite grasp.
How do we grasp it?

At night I can see a light in the corner of my vision, a dull white glow that reflects onto me what I think I want to see. When I look at it it is gone and all is dark. I cannot reach what I cannot see.

I have been in bed before when the storms rage and there's flashes of light like the sparks that come from a nuclear powerplant. I am Chernobyl and you are leaving me absent. You cannot read my markers because I am thousands above you, you can't see it yet because you aren't tall enough, and there's smoke filling my lungs and I can't cry. But maybe I can see your silhouette burnt into the backing of my concrete buildings. You burn and I burn and something else, something deeper burns, something I don't think you'd recognize, even if it punched you in the jaw. My nose is bleeding and you are in bed now, without the storm, but watching clouds pass by and thinking how boring it is without thunder to listen to, but I am here burning and you can't see how much it hurts because your window stops right where I begin, and you won't get up to peer out.

So far I love this book, as I have always enjoyed Nabokov's writing. This storyline is similar to a lot of Camus's work, and I was wondering if (in the sly chance anyone ever sees this group) they have suggestions for similar works that invoke similar feelings, if not loosely imitate his unique writing style.