Dear Nazareth
Ian made dinner tonight.
Too much garlic that he swore was intentional. We ate on the balcony, watched the city settling into itself the way it does at dusk, beautiful and completely indifferent to the fact that I spent the entire meal thinking about you.
I think about you the whole time.
Every meal, every walk, every moment Ian is talking and I'm nodding and producing the appropriate responses while somewhere underneath there’s this low and constant hum that’s entirely you.
The shape of you being gone.
I've started sleeping on your side of the bed. I don't know when that started. When I migrated across without deciding to, the way you move toward warmth without knowing you're cold.
Your pillow still smells like you. I don't know how that's possible since Ian confiscated the sheets three days ago citing, his words, 'the well-documented psychological dangers of scent-based attachment spirals.’
I didn't know whether to be offended or impressed.
He secretly washed your shirt too. I didn’t speak to him for two days.
Until he bought me wine and sat beside me on the balcony without asking if I wanted company. We watched the city for a long time without talking.
It was the best part of my day.
I hate that.
I hate that the best part of my day was sitting in silence with someone who isn't you while I wondered whether you’re okay. Whether you’re sleeping. Whether whatever you walked back into is as bad as what I imagine when the lights go out.
I wake up in the middle of the night sometimes. Cold sweat, heart hammering, reaching for you before I'm even fully conscious.
The dreams are never dramatic—no explosions, no blood, nothing you could point to and say that's why she woke up screaming.
Just you.
Becoming unreachable by degrees. Turning into something I can't get to. Something I can't pull back.
I wake up, and the room is dark and you're not there and for three or four seconds I don't know if you're alive.
Ian came running into my room the first night, said my screams scared the hell out of him. It’s been happening so often, I wake up some mornings with Ian sleeping next to me because I wouldn’t stop crying in my sleep, and he refuses to be in the next room ignoring the sounds of me falling apart.
Don’t tell him, but he’s the best friend I’ve ever had. And if you do tell him, I’ll just deny, deny, deny. Last thing he needs is more air for his already inflated ego.
It’s 2 a.m.
I miss you.
I need you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.