It is past midnight now, but she refuses to go to sleep in the bed that mocks her with insomnia. Sleep is something that has been stolen from her, another one of those ordinary things that say her life is not like others. But she is beyond caring that her circumstances have put her past even the fringe of belonging. Some might say, for shame, a young woman like this should be studying for the future that lies in wait for her. Other commentators of a more frivolous bent might say, she should be having fun with friends, going to parties and gossiping about boys. Both silly groups would probably say, you only get to be young once.

People who think like that would find it strange to see a young woman standing alone in a hotel room, overlooking a strange city. The all-nighter she pulls has nothing to do with mid-terms or getting into some graduate school so she can add initials after her last name. All those things of before seem silly now as she holds onto this present moment with what little sanity she still possesses. Her breath is the only thing that tells her she is still walks with the living, for she can’t relate to them in any other way.

It is hard to think straight when time means nothing. Life becomes a vacuum where everything is sucked inside, disappearing forever. She can barely even remember when she last ate, or when she last slept more than ten minutes at a time. It would be easy to forget she who she even was. She thinks of people and their advice, how stupid they can sound. People who say she could be happy if she only put her mind to it. She has found people resent it when someone younger than they is unhappy. It’s like because of her youth and inexperience, whatever she suffers must be some silly thing. Heartbreak is something only to be taken seriously when you are seen as old enough to have a mortgage.

She looks at her right hand, with the engagement ring as a symbol for the brokenness that is she. So much a symbol of the confusion she feels. It is like she is a widow without ever having been a wife. She is in mourning, and yet he is still alive. He is not here to share her bed as he has for all the months before. Yet they are still in love. Or so he said with the nod he gave her when she asked. Neither a bride or a maiden, she does not know who she is anymore. It is all so confusing to her. In her mind, she wears a wedding dress of black because she has been expelled from the celebration of joy that white brings.

Her life is one of vigil now. In the daytime, she makes a pilgrimage of the antiseptic hospitals halls that make her ill. How ironic that the place of healing fills her with such nausea. Sometimes she sees bright balloons that are intended to bring joy to the sick. Their brilliance gives her a headache, because it is a reminder at how artificial joy is in place such as this. You do the best you can, she hears. It’s just another one of those stupid things people say to her. It makes them feel like they did something to get her to smile and feel better. It gets them off the hook to say crap like that, like they got their charity brownie points for the day.

Every day she enters the hospital room where her lover now lies. Machines announce his heartbeat, a drip bag flows into him feeding him life by small measures. There are bandages that hide the face that charmed her not so long ago with a hearty laugh, and blue eyes that watered along with it in mirth. Those eyes are generally closed now. She can ask all day, but they will not open at her request. Like the rest of him, he is off-limits.

Sometimes she plays with the ring that she wears on the wrong hand when she is with him. It helps to remember her role here, but then it is also a reminder of why it is not on the other hand. Yet she waits every day here, for perhaps someday life to be what it will be once again. It is unrealistic to think like that, some other idiot with the answers has told her, you should forget about him, and you should be glad you weren’t married yet. Like a fiance is supposed to be nothing more than trivia. She is so sick of supposedly getting herself together for others to approve, so she rebels against this. Life will return to her when she is good and ready. No one can know what is right for her when she is the one sitting by her lover’s bedside.

When the day ends, she returns here to the hotel room to begin a different vigil, fighting against what the demons of the night might tell her with their trickery. At nighttime, when she lies in bed, she lays awake in her nightmares. There, the voices inside her head threaten to crash against her. But when she leaves the mockery of slumber and stands here at the window, keeping vigil on the city, she is able to train her focus to see things other than her shadows. She sees the lights of factories, skyscrapers; the kind that remain awake as she does to defy the need of rest. Her life is so strange that she takes refuge in this camaraderie. They demand nothing of her, she nothing of them, only that they be there for her when nighttime falls.

Daytime shadows are the worst. Daytime brings movement, and sunlight. Daytime brings to her reminders of the life that is taunting her outside the window of her life. Daytime is when the lights of the skyscrapers go dim in the sun’s brightness, and she is left with only herself. It is a sign that she must begin again, and the antibiotic smell of the hospital invades her once more.

In the night, her solitude is aided with the ghost of passion that had been hers. In the day, the ghost is stolen, and her isolation is a mockery of her loss. In the night, the lights of the city are friends and angels to fight with her if she stands with them. They are witnesses to her fantasies and do not judge where she seeks refuge. But they are gone in the day, and then she remembers she is alone. She is supposed to forget her dreams and come to her senses. The sun blinds her, barking at her to wake up from herself. She hates how the most mundane things fight against her now.

So for as long as she can, for another night she holds onto the memory that has sustained her and compelled her to remain a supplicant who seeks purification to the love she has known. She remembers what holy ecstasy is, what it is to know love in its fullest sense. It is something she has known, and it is why she is here now. She holds onto it, until the cracks of light signal the dawn once again. She dances the first dance at the wedding that may never happen every night here in her dreams. Mourning has its own rituals, and she catches hers in her soul, letting the river that is her love flow through her hands before it flows away once again in the morning light.