I feel like the wind is trapped inside me - she said. She was standing in the middle of my room, wearing an oversized work shirt and socks.

By the time I could focus on what she was saying, dragging my thoughts away from the computer, she was walking towards me. She looked like a pretty scarecrow, her hair stood on her head, like someone intended to hack it all off but got bored mid way through the activity.

Can you hear it? - she asked, and moved her torso to my ear. I put my arm around her waist, it was like holding a child. I pressed my ear against her warm skin, through the thin shirt. She smelled of the big blue bottle of lotion on the table.

"I can't hear anything." I said and smiled.

You aren't trying hard enough. - She said, her voice fraying at the edges.

Then she sat on my bed and looked at me, her face revealing no emotion.

"Want something to eat?" I asked and started to walk out of the room. A time had come where I couldn't stay around her for too long. I think the word that would fit here is unsettling.

I know she mumbled her answer, but her No followed me to the kitchen and watched me make a sandwich.
I wasted time in the kitchen, eating my sandwich and washing plates that were already cleaner than they needed to be.
After an hour or so, I returned to my room. She was standing in front of the mirror, knotting a scarf around her neck. She had on a sweater that used to fit her like they had her in mind when they made it. Now, it hung on her, like loose skin that's going to die.

I am going - she said and I asked her where because I was alarmed. This was how most of our fights in the past had started, where she would threaten to leave in the middle of the night and I would be caught between hoping she left so I could sleep in peace and begging her to wait because she'd get mugged or killed alone at a time like that.

But the fights were all gone. We were left with some kind of an empty sound, which was the sound you hear inside empty cupboards after all its contents have been packed away, and you poke your head inside it to check if anything is left behind.

I just have to not be here - she said, and picked up her bag. "Did I do something to tick you off?" I asked.

No.

"Okay. Is there anything I can do to make you stay?" I asked.

Then she turned and looked straight at me, her chin quivering. I walked towards her, ready to put my around her as she readied to cry.

But then she opened her mouth and it stayed open, a small little O, but no words came out. No dry tears even. She just rattled, like something invisible was shaking her.

I tried to pull her close, but I couldn't touch her without getting jolted. At that point it was more unreal than scary, which is strange because at this point I can't think of anything scarier than watching your girlfriend tremble like a leaf in the rain.

By the time the ambulance arrived, she was lying motionless on the ground, so stiff that I couldn't carry her even though she was as tiny as a bee.

When she opened her eyes, she called me a liar. She looked pale under the hospital lights but there was something fierce lurking behind her eyes. She then asked me to leave. When I told her I'd come back when she was less upset, she said "you heard the wind, but you wanted me to die."

The Christmas that followed, a little more than six months since the hospital room accusation, I got a card from her, clearly drawn with an unsteady hand. She had made snow men and children; all of them wore identical blue mufflers. The snow men looked like their hats were about to fly away. For someone whose drawing was that childlike, the depiction of a strong gale was spot on.