Then another.
Then my throat opens, and grief pours out of me like it’s been waiting behind my teeth all day, clawing for a way out.
A sob rips through my chest so hard my knees buckle.
I reach for the wall, fingers sliding against wet tile, and then I’m down—sitting on the shower floor with water hammering my back, arms wrapped around my stomach like I can hold myself together if I squeeze hard enough.
It doesn’t work.
Nothing works.
I cry like I’ve been holding my breath for eleven days.
Like I’ve been choking on every “I’m sorry” and every “He was such a good man” and every “Call me if you need anything.”
Like I’ve been swallowing the sound of a shovel hitting dirt.
Like I’ve been swallowing the image of a casket.
Like I’ve been swallowing Pops’s last “I love you” until it turned into a knife.
My mouth opens, and a sound comes out that doesn’t sound human.
It’s raw.
It’s ugly.
It’s the kind of grief you don’t see in public.
The kind you can’t perform.
“I don’t want this,” I gasp, words breaking apart as soon as they leave me. “I don’t want—Pops, I don’t?—”
His name shatters me.
Because saying it doesn’t bring him back.
Because nothing brings him back.
I press my forehead to my knees and sob so hard my ribs ache, like my body is trying to expel something poisonous.
The water keeps running.
The steam keeps rising.
The world keeps moving outside this locked door.
And I sit on the shower floor and finally let myself admit the truth I’ve been refusing since 4:54 a.m. that Thursday morning.
He’s not coming home.
And neither am I.
Not to the version of my life where Pops exists.
Not ever again.
40
