Every heartbeat feels like punishment.
Every memory slams back into me like glass shattering in my head.
“You know what’s fucked?”I laugh again, hollow and soft.“I keep thinking about all the things you’ll never get to do.You’ll never get married.Never get old.You’ll never be older than me.”
No reply.
Just the wind brushing through trees that might as well be mourning with me or mocking me—I can’t tell anymore.My eyes shut, and it’s all right there—the flash, the sound, the way his body collapsed, the way his eyes found mine one last time.
And then nothing.
Just that moment on loop, forever.
“This hurts so fucking much,” I choke out.“I can’t… I can’t keep doing this.”
My body starts shutting down.Heavy limbs, shallow breaths.
“I don’t know how to live with this,” I whisper.“And I don’t know if I even want to.”
The darkness opens like it’s been waiting for me, and this time I don’t fight it.
I let it wrap around me and let it pull me under.
When I wake up,the morning light is this pale, washed-out grey, the kind of color.My whole body is curled around the headstone, like I spent the night trying to keep him warm, like some pathetic part of me thought if I held on tight enough he wouldn’t leave again.
For a split second—one soft, impossible second—I think maybe I crossed over too.
Maybe I slipped into whatever place he went, the two of us finally on the same side of something for once in our lives.
But then the ache hits.
That deep, marrow-level ache.
The kind that proves I’m still here.
Still breathing, still alone, still without him.
And grief crashes back into me like a fucking tidal wave that waited until I opened my eyes to strike.I curl forward, forehead pressing into the damp soil, and a sound tears out of me—raw and hoarse and almost animal—that I didn’t even know I was capable of.It feels like everything inside me is being ripped out through my chest, like the whole night was just a rehearsal for this, the real breaking.
I don’t know how long I’m there like that, clinging to his grave like it’s the only thing that might keep me from drowning, when footsteps crunch somewhere behind me.
They’re slow, careful yet still hesitant.Like whoever it is already knows they’re walking in on something they shouldn’t see.
The groundskeepers.
Two older men, faces lined and tired in that way people get when they’ve spent years tending to other people’s grief.They stop a few feet away but don’t speak.
They don’t ask if I’m okay, they just watch.
And something about that—their silence, their patience, the way they stand there like they’ve seen this exact kind of devastation again and again—makes my throat close so tight I can barely swallow.
Because in their eyes, I see the truth I’ve been trying to outrun: I am not the first person brought to my knees by loss and I won’t be the last.
One of them steps forward, gently, like he’s approaching a wounded animal.
He reaches out, stops himself, lets his hand fall.
“Son,” he says softly, voice rough with pity, “you can’t stay here.”
