to the one I still wait for
I don't have anything beautiful to tell you this time, and maybe that is better, because if you were here you would probably laugh at me for trying to turn every feeling into something poetic when the truth is much simpler than that: I miss you, and I don't know what to do with it. I miss you when I wake up, I miss you when something funny happens and my first thought is to tell you, I miss you when I see someone wearing your kind of jacket, when I hear a laugh that almost sounds like yours, when the evening gets quiet and there is no reason for me to keep pretending that I am not still waiting for something that cannot happen. I wish I could say that I have gotten used to you being gone, but I haven't. I have only gotten better at carrying the feeling without letting anyone see how heavy it is.
sometimes I imagine that you are going to come back, and I hate myself a little for it because I know better, but hope has never been very interested in what I know. I imagine hearing your footsteps, seeing your face, hearing you say my name as though all this time between us was only a misunderstanding, and in those moments I don't ask for anything else from life. I don't need another year with you or some impossible second chance; I just want one ordinary hour, one hour where I don't have to remember that you are dead, where I can sit beside you and talk about nothing, where I can look at you without trying to memorize you because I don't know if I will ever see you again.
I think that is what I miss most, the ordinary things I never thought I would lose. your hand finding mine without thinking, the way you occupied the space beside me, the little sounds you made when you were tired, the comfort of knowing that somewhere in the world there was a person who knew me completely and still chose to stay. I didn't understand how precious that was until it became something I could only remember.
and I wish I could tell you that I am okay, but I don't want to lie to you.
I'm living. I'm laughing sometimes. I'm getting through my days.
but there is still a place inside me that keeps looking for you, and I don't think it will ever stop.
I hope you knew how loved you were. i hope, wherever you are, you still know.
for dear : همسر بچهژاپن
