(First posted here.)

There are certain truths you can speak only to walls. The electric fan droned. So this is what it feels like.

I stare at the microscope on the desk. The weight of years crashed into me like the volume of a hundred radios cranked beyond their limits. The weight of years, both numbing and heart-rending, danced at the crystal edges of my brain as my eyes caressed the long dark stem of the lab equipment. The weight of years, sweet and painful like honey with shards of glass, slowly bulldozed its way into my muscles, bludgeoning them into weak matter that will never be able to lift pencils in weeks.

You were in the other room, close by, laughing at something.

It was a freaking microscope. Clinical, mechanical, utilitarian. But it was also me telling you that I believed in your dreams and that I hope by giving you this you would believe in yourself, too.

It worked too well.

So was I being selfish and thus deserved the weight of years in my shoulders? The gut-splitting malaise of years spent loving from afar. Or nearby, but in unspoken terms.  Was I being sentimental? That this, the weight of years in my arms, in my legs, in my heart, are my own doing, my own undoing, my own creation, my own destruction, a path I invented and must see to its end?

What exactly did I do wrong?

And if there was nothing wrong about this, the weight of years, then why does the sound of your voice leave me breathless? I stare at the microscope, and so far it has not stared back at me. It just sat there, alone and unassuming, spinning atoms unaware of the meanings packed in its metallic hide.