Paperweights
Madelyn Pendrell
Pendrell@prodigy.net
Rating:  V A 
Spoilers: Requiem though it could stand on its own
Disclaimer: Maddy looks at Mulderclone. . Mulderclone 
and Maddy look around apartment. . Look back at one 
another. . NOPE Chris Carter defiantly doesnt live here, 
but if he did maybe he could pay my rent. ..
Authour Notes: Im going without a beta. . This is my 
first post so please be kind to my fragile ego. . 
Special thanks to Phyllis for asking all the right 
questions. 
Feedback: please feed my mailbox Its hungry!
Summary: I want those days back the days when we talked 
about useless things, just because we could. I had 
missed it once before I was bound to miss it for 
numbness.


Paperweights

I often think about your return. Ponder which hospital I 
will be called to in the middle of the night. Is this how 
waiting is I wonder. Waiting for the new scars and 
bruises to enter your life. Waiting for the change that 
is taking place to end. Your return will only signal the 
beginning of change for us. Change for me has been 
happening for months now, as my body grows beneath me and 
I ponder how this will change things. I find myself 
thinking, more often then I told myself I should, about 
the change that will happen if you dont return. Ive 
missed you once I can miss you again. Line of argument. 
So I force myself to think about the night where I walk 
into a hospital pressed and sleepless running towards 
you, knowing you cant run towards me. You will be like me 
I picture it, scarred and silent, almost lifeless in the 
white crisp sheets. Thin I see you devastatingly thin, 
hollow cheeks, thin arms, and outgrown hair. This isnt 
you, but change sometimes happen rapidly. You have 
replaced myself in the nightmares. I never told you this, 
but I dream of myself dying all the time. Hospital beds 
morgue tables, Im always dying. Death singles change 
right? Justification, for myself. 

You werent there for me the day of reckoning. The day I 
walked, shattered tears, into the clinic, came out 
lonelier then I went in. Ive lost too much I couldnt have 
this taken away as well. I couldnt do this myself either 
to take away something Ive longed for, for so long. I 
imagined youre banter at the idea. Religion has nothing 
to do with my life anymore, I abandoned that long ago, to 
many things in conflict, my religion didnt explain you. 
So I walked away crestfallen, waiting for your return, 
Ive missed you before, I cant miss you again. Things 
change I tell myself, maybe I wont have to deal with the 
devil to save a life, maybe I can sit in my home and 
close my eyes and I will awake in the life that I have 
missed. The life where we stopped running the life where 
we stand still and enjoy the breviary of the moment, and 
abortion doesnt enter our minds. I think about that world 
often the, what if world, what if we had turned away 
years ago what if but what if doesnt answer. What if 
change happened when I was closed my eyes and woke up and 
I missed everything, Ive missed it once before I cant 
miss it again.
The hardest part of the day is the night, when I fall 
into my nightmares of disappearance, hand covering our 
child, that you will never know, I cant say these things. 
Falling asleep in cold sheets, absence of arms and 
hearts, things that made me sleep through the night. Then 
the dreams begin, whats worse then the nightmares are the 
ones I awake from feeling your phantom arms around mine. 
Waking up slowly in the stark realization that it is only 
a dream and my life is empty of all these things. Phantom 
arms are all I have to hold onto. Scattered tears come 
and go at night, until the sun dawns beckoning me to a 
new day. Work hospital visitd phantom memories Ive never 
realized what an empty hour lunch can be. I dont know 
whats worse now the waking or the sleeping, its all stark 
and absent. I tell myself I cant miss you when I wake up 
sobbing into my pillow, but how can you not miss the 
other half of your soul. The realization that you are 
alone is stark and blinding in the pre dawn hours when 
you lie awake wondering what happened to your life.
 
Then it came the day I was dreading, It started off as a 
sharp pain, I wasnt worried, then the blood. No one knew, 
and so they kept questioning if I was sure it was 
something more. So I stood in the emergency room next to 
a man who didnt know my life, trying to cling to 
something desperately, my last chance. The whispered yes 
almost shameful when they asked if I was pregnant. I 
remember his shock as he heard the news, the man who had 
worked beside me for the last four months who didnt know 
something vital, crestfallen. That was my last hope the 
only thing keeping me going through the nightmares and 
the phantom dreams. And I lost it that day. All I could 
think was where my coat was it was too cold in the stark 
crisp sheets that were acting as my protector from the 
cold. That was your job. Crestfallen, as people gathered 
around my bed while I pretended to sleep, listened to 
their whispering words, why didnt we know, why had she 
been so silent. I imagined your phantom presence holding 
my hand, brushing my hair away from my face, but it was 
starkly absent from my life. The realization that I was 
startling alone again, nothing to hold onto. The fragile 
state where you know your life is over but you have to 
get up the next morning and go on. I carry that day in my 
heart. 

And thats when I stopped hopping and pondering and 
imagining the grey day you would return into my life. 
Because I knew that wasnt going to happen anymore. There 
would be no quiet conversation about our baby girl, or 
about how our life was changed. I didnt want change 
anymore. I wanted to return to your warm embrace and 
sleep in that warmth and forget that any of this had 
happened. I couldnt go home, your phantom was there 
lingering on, calling me into sorrow. So I left, boarded 
an airplane with an assumed name and moved on. But you 
cant move on when the phantom chases after you in the 
dark of night, finds you cold and alone in clean soft 
sheets at expensive hotels. And so I boarded another 
plane and returned to the place where sorrow lived and 
consumed my heart. I began believing that I could go on. 
Pick up life without you and our child, pretend like the 
last eight years hadnt happened. 

I answered all my messages, left my own, no one answered 
that night. I didnt expect anyone too, I had lied and 
then fled from this life, it would take some time to 
rebuild that again, but I didnt want to rebuild all of 
it.  So I went to dinner. Nothing had changed I was the 
same women I had been before, eating alone, living alone, 
dreaming alone. I had to remind myself that life had 
changed in small ways I was use to phantom arms, and 
warmth, I had known something that had been taken away. I 
saw your face reflected in the snow as I ate. I told 
myself it wasnt you, but my heart ached for you, longed 
for a real embrace. So I sat there staring out the window 
as you and four other men walked hurriedly away, one of 
them on the phone talking frantically to the other end, 
you were listening saying things to him. I began to cry, 
crestfallen at my imagination of things that were not of 
this world. The waitress finally ushered me into the 
bathroom I was scaring customers by my sudden out burst 
of emotion over vegetable soup. Had they known my life 
they would have let me cry at my table, they didnt 
understand I was crestfallen.  So I was ushered out after 
I calmed myself, the diner picking up my tab. I traced my 
way home in the light fallen snow, snow that I had once 
loved and longed for during the summer heat. I was numb 
to this sensation of the cold numb to the frost before 
me, numb for the things I longed for but could never hold 
in my grasp again. I had missed it once before I was 
bound to miss it for numbness.

My shoes made a strange scuffling noise as I walked down 
the tree lined streets, branches clinging to the wet snow 
blanket that promised to protect them in warmth for the 
evening, a promise to keep away the thaw of spring. I 
needed that blanket of snow the promise to keep away the 
thaw, I needed my heart frozen in time. It had only been 
six months I reminded myself, it takes the heart years to 
heal from the injustice of one summer. I told the sky 
that as the snow promised to consume me, and let me go 
back in time to another snow fallen nights were you 
walked me home and talked about the weight of a 
paperweight. I want those days back the days when we 
talked about useless things just because we could. Do you 
remember those nights, when it seemed the world was our 
for the taking, its a wonderful sensation when life 
itself seems to stop outside your existence to let you 
take weight of the angle of the moonlight on your lovers 
face on Christmas Eve. I wanted that back, I hadnt put 
enough value in nighttime walks were you greeted friends 
in the street and I talked about my college roommates. I 
have almost forgotten what your face looked like when I 
told you I loved you. You already knew such things, our 
life was filled with unspoken words, but have you 
forgotten that I am here. I have been waiting for your 
return in the snow-covered squares of Europe, waiting to 
talk about our paperweights. Waiting to hold your hand 
and whisper into your ear when the world seems too much 
to bear. This is the burden I bear alone in the snow. I 
need the blankets to promise to keep me safe from the 
loss of all of this. I need the blankets to protect my 
heart from experiencing the severing of my life, but most 
of all I need you to walk through the tree lined streets 
and whispering that this has all been a dream and I can 
wake up now in my familiar life. Ive missed you once 
before, and I will spend an eternity crestfallen.