Word Count: 1348
May 2019

He can no longer listen to certain songs without hearing the sound of her voice.

So he doesn't listen to music anymore. The radio in the car is silent, the TV screen is always black, and his guitar, and the ukulele, and the banjo she gave him are all packed away, hidden somewhere in the attic in a house he can no longer bear to set foot in. Once, in the beginning, soon after she was gone, his fingers itched to play them, but instinct always carried him to a particular song, and he knew after the first time that he was not strong enough to make it through to the end. Now that feeling in his fingers lays dormant, for the effort seems meaningless without her there.

He can no longer look at her picture without caving to hope, and imagining that she would soon walk through the door, and he could take her into his arms, and he could hold her close, run his fingers through her hair, kiss her face, refuse to let go, and keep her here where she no longer belongs.

So the pictures, like his guitar, like his ukulele and banjo, are gone, too, and sometimes, in the middle of the day in the crowded streets, or in the middle of the night when he surrounds himself with other nameless people, he can pretend that he no longer remembers her face.

But she haunts him. She lingers still, in a way neither Skye nor his first youthful foray into lovemaking ever did, and in a way none of the countless others he mingles amongst now ever will.

He does not like to think about those final days, the blood and the screaming, the frightened look in her eyes, the torturous hours spent pacing the hospital hallways, sitting by her bedside, holding her limp white hand. He does not like to remember that he never even had the chance to say a proper goodbye, for when the time came for it she could no longer hear him, and his many plaintive “I love you”s came brokenly, disrupted by the sort of hard, wrenching sobs that came with the grief, and loss, and pain of losing half of one's life.

'Half?' he wonders. That isn't right. She was more than half.

She was all of it, and with her gone he has nothing left.

Twenty-six years old and he does not know how to take care of himself without her. He'd barely known how to take care of himself with her, and now that she is no longer there to help him it seems pointless to try. He eats sparingly, sleeps infrequently, lets the laundry and the dishes pile up until he can swear he hears her nagging disapproval.

“I specifically kept the old laundry chute so you wouldn't leave your clothes on the floor anymore, and yet I still end up tripping over your underwear.”

The nostalgic smile that crosses his face in those moments is fleeting. Then the pain comes, and he scrambles to remove the offending mess. He throws it all into trash-bags—drink bottles, empty food containers, clothes, everything—until the place is empty and silent and he can no longer imagine her with him. He replaces it all with new things, in styles she never would have chosen for him, or dishes she never would have made, and he wraps himself up in a cocoon of make-believe.

And that is how he lives—numb, sightless, and disbelieving. He avoids the truth, and everything and everyone who might confront him with it. He withdraws from his family, he pulls away from his friends. They can never understand. They try, of course, and once he might have let them console him, but though they too feel loss and grief it is nothing like his, nor can it ever be, for she had been but a part of their lives.

She was everything in his.

So he blocks her out. He keeps no reminders and allows neither family nor friend to bring others about. He works long hours at a dead-end job he doesn't even need if only to keep his mind from straying, and at night he passes the long, lonely hours at dimly lit bars, accepting bottle after bottle until he is too tired and bleary to do anything but sleep a dreamless sleep free from her influence. If he tries hard enough, if he pretends hard enough, it is almost as if she'd never even existed at all.

But he knows better. All it takes is a single thought, a single moment, a single image, and the memories return in a landslide.

He can be walking aimlessly through the streets and catch a whiff of another woman's perfume, but it smells like her, and he will turn to search for her through the crowd, for long blonde curls and a sweet smile, and blue-green eyes that flash with wonder and mischief, with life, with excitement, with joy, and with love. He can be passing an empty room and catch sight of a beam of warm spring sunlight streaming through the window, and he will stop and close his eyes and hear the soft tap and glide of pointe shoes across the floor, the quiet strains of mournful music, and he will see—clearly, as if she were there before him still—the soft, breathtaking motions of her final dance.

That is the death that he prefers to remember, that of the dying swan, for it was ethereal and gentle as she had been. It is only fitting, he thinks, that she should die in white, pure and incandescent upon the stage. Better that than the images that came after—her fair hair caked with blood, her small, thin body broken, hooked up to all manner of machines that inevitably failed to keep her alive.

That failure is his also. He feels it with every breath, with every waking moment. He feels it in the way he longs for her, he feels it in the way he struggles so hard not to remember. It is torture, this lifeless life, this numb existence, and he knows not how to escape from it, from her.

And he knows he never will.

And there is a part of him, a great part of him, that does not want to.

In time he might learn. In time he might be able to smell her perfume without it causing his heart to skip a beat. In time he might be able to take care of himself without her. In time he might be able to look at her picture and see her face without the tears that always spring into his eyes with the realization that he will never be able to hold her again. Perhaps he will even be able to smile, and to speak her name, and visit the cemetery to sit by her grave, and place a blue rose upon the stone that marks the place where she rests beside her father.

Perhaps, in time, he will let go of his denial to find a new acceptance.

Not move on, he tells himself, for he knows he will never be able to put her behind him; she is as present in his life now as she was before. But perhaps he will move forward—keep her memory and the pieces of her that still linger close to his heart, and take strength from them.

For this life is only temporary, and though he might no longer be able to hear her, or see her, or feel her, he will be with her in the end.

And in those moments, far into the future, when he fears that he will no longer be able to remember the sound of her voice, he will climb the stairs into the attic of a house he can not yet bear to set foot in, and he will find his guitar, and the ukulele, and the banjo she gave him, and he will let his fingers wander over the strings in a familiar song.