to you, wherever the years have taken you
I still miss you in places where I shouldn't. I miss you when the kettle begins to whistle, because you used to complain that I always let it boil too long. I miss you when it rains against the windows, when the streetlights come on one by one, when I wake up in the middle of the night and, for one terrible second, forget that there is no one beside me.
that second is the worst.
bcause for that tiny piece of time, I have you back.
then I reach across the bed, and there is only cold linen beneath my hand, and I remember.
I remember everything.
I remember how your voice sounded when you were tired. I remember the way you would say my name when you wanted me to listen. I remember how you used to fall asleep halfway through a conversation and deny it when I told you the next morning.
I remember things I never thought I would miss. I would give almost anything to hear you complain about something meaningless again.
Isn't that cruel?
When you were here i thought I had forever to remember you. I thought there would always be another morning, another conversation, another night when I could look at you and think, I'll tell you tomorrow.
I have so many tomorrows now but none of them have you in them.
sometimes I wonder if you ever think of me.
not in some grand, tragic way. I don't need you to ache for me. I just want to know whether, somewhere in the middle of an ordinary day, something still reminds you of the life we had.
a song. a certain kind of weather. the smell of someone's perfume passing you in the street.
anything.
I want to believe I exist somewhere outside my own memory.
because lately I am afraid that I don't.
everyone else has continued living, and I have continued too, I suppose, but there is a strange difference between moving forward and actually leaving something behind.
I never left you behind.
I just learned how to carry you without anyone noticing.
I carry you through grocery stores and crowded streets and quiet mornings. I carry you into conversations where nobody knows why I suddenly go silent. I carry you home every night and place you carefully beside me in the dark, where no one can see how much I still miss you.
and sometimes, when I am almost asleep, I let myself believe that you are there.
I imagine your breathing beside me. I imagine turning toward you.
I imagine saying, I missed you and then morning comes.
It always does.
that is the part I hate most. not that you are gone but that the world keeps becoming morning without you.
i wish I could tell you that it gets easier. maybe it does.
maybe I am simply getting better at hiding the wound.
but there are still nights when I would trade every year I have left just to have five minutes with you again.
five minutes. I wouldn't ask for forever. I wouldn't even ask you to stay.
I would just sit beside you and look at you long enough to memorize your face one more time.
then I would let you go.
I think. God, I hope I could.
because the truth is, I have spent so long missing you that sometimes I cannot remember who I was before I knew what it meant to lose someone I would have chosen every single time.
and if there is any place where you can hear this, if somehow these words can cross whatever distance has grown between us, then I hope you know one thing.
I loved you. I love you.
I don't know which tense is supposed to be correct anymore.
I only know that every version of me, in every life I can imagine, still turns toward you. and every time, there is nothing there.
only the empty side of the bed. only the morning. only me, waking up again.
for dear : @sm7jj
