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I remember when we were fifteen and you were dating that girl. All my friends were making fun of you and I could only join in, but my stomach clenched with the sight. I saw you and her running to that romantic tea shop and my throat tightened, my hands formed fists by my side but there was nothing I could do.
I was such a fool back then, falling in love for you in that way. I knew we could never stay together, I knew you wouldn’t look at me feeling anything other than hatred but I couldn’t stop my fifteen year old heart. It loved the way your hair glowed on the sun, those messy locks glittering with the light, your smile flashing from across the room. Never to me, though, but not even the self-centred person that I am could care about that. You were so warm, warmer than everything I had ever known.
You have been dead from two years now. There's a memorial for you, and everyone is wearing dark robes, but no one feels this pain as much as I do. Of course, your friends must be wretched, and I don’t deny their pain but they at least had you once. I never did.
I never will.
You were like a fluttered dream on my wildest fantasies, you and your sharp green eyes. You looked at me and I felt like I was trapped in the middle of a storm, but I never wanted it to stop raining. I never wanted you to leave me in the piercing drizzle that never stopped falling since you left.
I went to see your grave once, on my birthday. I wanted to dig you up and hold your skeleton, to see if I could feel your presence lingering your rotten remains. I would feel how you had been taken away from that body, how your life had been ripped apart from it. But I didn’t do that, I didn’t want to face that the only thing left of you was a pile of bones that held no life on them anymore. They hold just a memory of you, but they aren’t you, they just used to be the one thing that made you stand tall. But you aren’t standing anymore.
Bet you never thought how your bones would be the only thing left of you, the only thing that we have to remember that you once lived and you once breathed and you once loved. They were with you always, supporting you through everything in a way that I could never have. I made myself jealous of your bones, because you trusted them, and they were there and you were everywhere for them.
You are everywhere for me now. I cannot feel any smell wondering if that isn’t your smell, because I never knew what it was. I wonder if you’d like what I hear, I know you wouldn’t like what I say. I don’t know which sights you’d love, or which ones you’d hate but you’re not there to tell me. So I make them up, and I make your voice up because I can never remember it just right. I talk to you when I’m alone and when I’m surrounded by people, but my brain can never mimic the exact amount of warmness and roughness that it had.
But it’s all that I have left, and I keep a picture of you that I cut out from a newspaper inside my pocket because it makes me feel safe, like you’re lingering all over my life. I feel you hanging on every silence and I see your smile everywhere. I know every line and every shape that forms your smile by heart, but I also know how much I wanted to have that smile to me, but never did. I love the dimples you had on your right cheek and that crooked front tooth. I love how your eyes sparkled when you smiled.
I talked to your bones, when I went to see your grave. Surprisingly no one else had come to visit you that day, so it was just me and you. It felt like a personal birthday gift, and I felt like you were the one who would have arranged that. Your bones didn’t reply, but they didn’t need to. I didn’t want to hear anything from what they had to say, because being around something that had your life around it once… that was enough.
You didn’t spill any blood when you died but sometimes I imagine just that, crimson liquid bursting through you as your life faded away. I imagine you falling and your numb hands touching the floor slowly, your head turned in a weird angle. I imagine myself touching your cheek and it being cold, so cold that it could never hold yourself inside of it.
I remember when your shadow gave up on you and there was nothing but darkness all around, how air left my lungs when I saw your unfocused eyes. I thought how I could never tell you how I felt, how it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because you would never love me back, but you weren’t there anymore to hear my unsaid words. It was just a shell that used to hold all your immensity inside, and I could not look at that shell because it burned me inside, it burned me to know that you had faded away forever.
Every day your absence cuts my skin and I can’t be strong when I feel like I might collapse in any second, when I feel like your void will be too much for me to bear. When I think you are the air and I have nothing else left to breathe.
But my lungs work themselves up and air fills me up but you’re still not there and the world still feels hollow. I look at things and everything seems misplaced, the world seems like it has shifted and it isn’t the same world anymore. You are gone, and the life that you lived, the world you breathed in, is also gone, nothing seems right anymore.
Some people deal with the dead like they were slowly drifting away from them, and that makes the wounds heal, their tears dry. But it was never like that with me, because when I saw that you weren’t there anymore the universe sucked everything from all around me, you had left, you were suddenly gone and I knew that you’d never be back again. I knew that that bit of my heart that had been taken away in such a brutal way would never return, it would never be replaced by anything else.
How am I supposed to breathe and live every day if you’re not here? How am I supposed to live in a world where the flowers grow with the rain that falls, but that rain and those flowers had never heard your laugh? How am I supposed to hold myself still, and don’t prevent myself from scattering all around myself when I remember that you aren’t here? It hurts me all over to realize that the air that fills my lungs every day comes from a world where you don’t exist.
You don’t exist anymore in this world. Everything around me is a void because nothing remembers you quite like I do, nothing has you anymore. Your picture is just a faint memory, and it mimics your smile and your eyes but it doesn’t have you in it anymore. You aren’t here. You aren’t here with me.
You are gone and I can’t breathe but I have to, I have to let myself be filled up with oxygen every second because I am human, and you were human. That’s why you died, because you needed to breathe but you stopped. The oxygen that charges my body can never do the same for you because you are nothing less than a thought now.
You are every thought that I ever have, but you aren’t anything more than that, anything more than just a memory that floods through my brain and numbs everything about me that isn’t you.
I dance around my room and I put my hands on my own shoulders and I pretend that that’s you there, dancing with me, you run your fingers through my hair and I feel myself blushing. You touch my lips, and my closed eyes see how your green eyes lock with mine and they see how you smile. I always open my eyes eventually and when I do, all I see is the empty space inside my arms where you should be.
You are dead. Dead. Dead. Life had been ripped away from you when you were too young, but even if it weren’t, it would be too early. You should have never gone away from here, you should have never left me with nothing more than your face printed on my brain.
When I first saw you dead I wanted to run faster and further as I could, but I couldn’t. My feet were anchors and they were pulling me down, dragging me to the ground, I lost all my strength and I had no energy to collapse. I didn’t want to see your body anymore, I didn’t want it to pollute my brain and I didn’t want to forget how you looked like when there was life inside of you.
But I couldn’t take it anymore after a few hours and I broke in the room where they were keeping your corpse and I stayed there with you. I broke down, my head lowered on your chest, my hands grabbed you strongly but I didn’t have any more hope that you would open your eyes anymore. I held you with everything I had, I wanted to pour my love all over you, but it didn’t work. It wasn’t you anymore and that tore me inside, because the smell I was feeling was only of ash and death and that wasn’t you anymore and those numb arms weren’t yours, those eyes weren’t yours, and you weren’t there.
I remember how I thought that I would have traded places with you anytime, because I am selfish and I would rather be dead than to feel that you aren’t here anymore. I would rather let people feel the pain of my death than to let myself feel the pain of yours, and I would rather let the world turn without me than without you.
You were never mine, but I’m yours. You don’t exist anymore, but I’m still yours. And If I were there when you died, I would have thrown myself in front of you. I never thought I’d die for anyone, but I would die for you.
I thought that when I held your lifeless body and I still think that every single day. Living with your emptiness hurts me all over, but I still love you. It will never come a day when I won’t love you, when it won’t hurt but I make my heart beat for you. I make every heart beat count for you, because I know how you’d wish you had more. Everything I see, everything I feel, I do it for you. I live for the life you have lost.
We never shared anything, but I now share this with you. The life and the love that you lost.