• I begin the ritual, picking up each orange bottle with a methodical wariness. I count each pill as it falls into my hand, of kind, how many of each, and then again the total number. I count the bottles as I set each back onto the counter, line them up and take a step back.

    I remember the number of pills my grandparents would take; various miracles for bone loss, memory, vision. With all of my anti-depressants, anti-psychotics, anti-anxieties, anti-insomnias – anti-life, anti-human – I wish there was a single vitamin in the line of prescription orange. They’re supposed to make me live easier, not be free of the ghosts, but able to deal with them like a normal person.

    I’m beginning to hate the word ‘normal’, with how much I hear it now. Before it was just a word, a comparison used to judge things that didn’t fit. Now that I am one, I resent the word. I resent what it means and what it has made me.

    I step to the counter again and touch each of the bottles. My hand hesitates, almost picks one up. The label talks of sleeping pills, ones I know would have a lasting effect if I took too many, and I am tempted, tempted to sleep eternally.

    I withdraw, as I always do, and I investigate the other things on the counter. A basket of fruit sits in the middle that I haven’t touched; the fruit is starting to go bad but I can’t make myself throw it away. A toaster, the master of my meals, sits at the left of the basket and boasts of a breakfast on the ‘morrow, if I can make myself eat anything at all. To the right, in the shadow of my miracle cures, sit a few bottles without my name, boasting orange, but not my perversions of the mind. I reach out and pick one up, run my finger over the name there and say it quietly to myself, as if trying to remember some distant memory.

    “William…”

    My eyes close and I remember the news flash, the plane crash and the headline ‘No Survivors!’ I feel myself shaking again and set the bottle down, stepping back in an effort to withdraw from the memories. My psychiatrist says to not dwell, but I don’t think she understands.

    I was the only one who called him William. He was always Bill, the party man, the fast driver, the smart-aleck everyone had as their friend. He was beautiful and kind and chose me from the crowd like a prized pig. Took my hand and loved me, like I had never thought possible.

    It had been a year like that, with him -- of romance and gentleness that you only see in stories. He had migraines and took prescriptions for them. He wore glasses and never contacts. Made fun of my straight-laced ways and tickled me from behind when I got too serious.

    My hand fumbled over the counter as I feel the darkness come and I fight against the blackout, like a thick velvet curtain dropping after a theatrical show. I feel something curved and round, and I manage to pull back into my kitchen, one hand still grasping my pills and then other resting on a small, cellophane wrapped item.

    A small candy cane, like the kind kids get at school from their teachers on Christmas; the kind that are enough for a treat but not enough to get amped-up on sugar; the kind that are two stuck together, individually wrapped and impossible to separate so you have to eat both.

    I know I should throw it away, but, like the fruit he always kept, I can’t make myself.

    He would buy these in bulk after the holidays and munch on one every day, leaving it on the counter with his medicines so he wouldn’t forget. He had said that they were the surest way to a long life, and peppermint candy canes would make him live forever. He promised.

    He was wrong. He was wrong about so many things, broke so many promises that he made without a thought. Light things to ease me from my worries and get a smile on my lips, ones that were always too thin but he enjoyed kissing anyway. Sometimes I wonder if he was being punished by some god, jealous of him, for making such promises.

    “You should stop worrying, Bobby,” he had said, patting my cheek and picking up a suitcase. “It’s just a quick flight to see my ‘rents and then I’ll be home, just like always. Every time you worry, Bobby, and every time I come back. I promise I’ll come back. I always promise and I always do… It isn’t as though the plane will crash.”

    I pick up the glass of water waiting for me and take the pills I have been clutching in my hand. They go down like something alive, trying to come back up, and for a moment I feel as if I’m going to vomit. It passes and I sigh, looking over the lined bottles and the rotting fruit and the candy cane, and don’t touch any of it. I set the glass down and move to leave the kitchen, towards the bed I now share with no one, in a room I keep dark so I can’t look at the pictures of us on the wall.

    I go to the therapy, to forget him. I try to date again, to forget him. I take pills, to forget him.

    But I can’t forget him. I can’t forget the man who whispered things in my ear late at night. I can’t forget the man who sent me roses at work. I can’t forget the man whose friends said I was wrong for him, the ones who said it wouldn’t work. I can’t forget the man who chose me over everyone. I can’t forget the man who loved me for who I was, when no one else would.

    I can’t forget the man who said he would come back. I can’t forget the man who never will.

    William.