When I look back, I should have saw it coming. The drift of the fallen bark, floating down the creek bed that I now sit and stare into. I felt the empty drift in as something in my head screams, “it’s right there”. I’ve no more ever expected anyone to stick around than I have myself to do the same. But he was a wind that I wanted to keep blowing across my face and in my hair. A sound echoing that I just can’t seem to place anywhere else. I wrapped my heart around his smile, and for once, even if just once, I felt safe for a moment.

But isn’t that how it goes when self-sabotaging? You let each moment slip right through your fingers. Why would I ever ask someone to stay in such an uncompleted life? I guess I was thinking he completed it. We should never sit around and dwell on the things we think we deserve. Good or bad. We should just accept things as they are. But if given the chance, I would kiss his lips once more. Without them, my lips a shade of blue, suffocating.

If he could have just waited just a bit longer? But why ask that of someone..

These changes are fast-coming. I can feel them. I will revel in them now…alone. When we say we miss someone, it’s not really enough is it? To lose them speaks volumes of its own. I will try and go at it alone, which is a path I know and recognize all too well.

Have you ever felt so alone and empty that it’s almost like you’re starving, and your stomach is sinking into your back. That growl in your stomach becomes louder than your thoughts, and you have no way to feed it?

I have failed him, and seemingly failed myself. But he failed me too? For if he had not, I would instead be sitting here reassured and loved in person and not dripping pathetic tears down my neck and blowing snot that could clear a room during this sad pandemic.

His face like a constant reminder of an almost, and a memory of kiss, or a drunken night by the fire laughing, talking about the stars, slowly will drift from my memory while I try to hold onto every second of it.

Truth is, I would have spent my life in this chaos and fought through every second of it if it meant the ending was us….

But goodbye is a word I know all too well…