Day in and day out I think about the young love I once enjoyed. The love of my life, now my husband and I would dream of a humble home under a gleaming sky that we would share with a family and a happy future, but I come to my senses quickly. In a neighbourhood where the grey clouds are heavy, thick fumes in the air from busy cars and registered smokers, and pedestrians gloomy as they drag themself along the pavement help remind me of my unsatisfying reality. 

My dearest love was once the prize of the city. Tall and mighty, truly striking to anyone who was him stormed the streets with his high hopes of wealth and happiness. But chose the wrong path along the way. Now we live in a small, damp apartment empty with the little possessions we share. The smell of smoke and alcohol forever lingering in the floorboards from my husband unemployed days of drinking and wasting his life away. I cannot leave him because even though our misfortune is current, we still have a love for each other. Even so, he is so blind to his misdoings. As the day fades and the gleaming city light arises preparing for the night to settle, my husband is wisped off from the excitement of the darkness, leaving me alone in our little apartment with no heating. I don’t know exactly what he does but once he makes his way back, he’s mood is stale and grumpy, mind fuzzy about how he got home. Pockets empty I assume he wasted the night with a mix of gambling and drinking. It’s late when he finally awakes so I try and confront him with his whereabouts. I try to ask what he’s doing with our money, and if his actions continue we will be forced out and will have nothing left. But all I get is a snarl in my face as he tried to talk past me. I ask if he’s been taking his medication, but again I get no answer as he walks to the shelf for a can of beans. 

Before I met my husband he has taken medication to help stop hallucinations and to help him focus, and he has taken them every day until now. They now stay static in the cupboard, dust growing around the container because of his laziness and carelessness. 

Weeks go by and the same schedule of going out at night and sleeping all-day stayed. The money was going quick. Once again I tried to confront him but he would just yell ‘No!, No! It’s the boy. He’s talking all our money!’ Running up and down the apartment, he looked like he was chasing something. As I screamed and cried from the corner begging for him to stop it, but it never did. He described a little boy that would come into our home at night and take our valuables, then climb down and run off into the night. I tried to tell him that he was acting crazy, that our valuables were gone because he would sell them, and use them to gamble but he never listened. 

The stomping of the floorboards sounded like thunder and husband continued to wreck the little we have. Swimming through the cupboards grasping at the air for what he claimed to be a tiny boy. Nocking over the pills bottles causing a spray of unused pills to scatter over the floor, but he paid no mind to them or their purpose. I tried to force him to stop, picking up the pills and shoving them in his face, but he was stronger than me and knocked my off with easy. The determination on his face to get back that was his not realised that it had been him that was wasting our goods. Now near the window, he kept scurrying closer and closer, reaching out of something that was never there. One last push from this back leg sending him over the ledge, causing him to fall. As I ran over to see, he had smacked hard on the concrete floor below, his hands lay empty. No tiny boy. Only the the look of ignorance on his face.