"My love, if you go away in a few days, the world will lose its colors and darken like the land of Mordor. If you go away and leave me to wander aimlessly, alone in this gone wild sea, like a ship with a broken rudder and sunken sailors, and if I don't find comfort in the warmth of your body clutched in my embrace at the end of the day, I'm afraid I won't survive."*

Today is ten years since you left me. Since we sent you away to the place of no return.

Just around this hour you were dying, your heart was beating for the last time under the palm of my hand that stroked your fur while my eyes were blinded with tears. I thought I would die with you. I wanted to die with you!

Sometimes I think I did.

April 19, 2006.

7:20 p.m.

This is the moment when you died. This is the moment when time stopped. Crushed under the weight of the universe. My head wanted to explode as it wants to explode now, crushed under the burden of 10 years of life spent without you.

I am fighting tears so hard on this black anniversary. The sun is shining through the window, caressing my face. But it doesn't warm me. Because I need you to warm me. I need your love and I need to give you my love. Like it was before, in another life, in another time.

When everything had more sense, when the world was painted in brighter colors.

I have kept my promise, my love. There isn't another animal in my life. My heart belongs to you, my dearest. My brother, my friend, my everything. It will be yours through all the remaining days I have left in this life, and it will be yours in death.

Sleep, my love. Soon I will join you. Whether in a new life or in dreams of non-existing memories, we will be together again. We have to.

BJ

*An excerpt from A World Without Color by Bernard Jan. The book is available for purchase in Croatian only.