My hand feels cold without yours clasped within it. Instead of our hands being freezing together as they swing in the little space between us as we walk, my hands are cold and stuffed into my pockets. Not cold cold, no. But numb cold. The cold that itches. That's uncomfortable. That amplifies just how much I miss you.
I shiver.
See, had you been here, you wouldve pulled me into your side, kissed my temple. I would've giggled and buried myself further under your arm.
You were my warmth. You were my safety net. My home.
Day by day the cold seeps inside me, and I don't know what to do. You were always there, constant and everlasting. But now you're not, and I have no idea what I'm doing.
This was our route. Our walk around town if we got bored of staring at the TV; it was safe to say it happened a lot.
I stare at the frozen trail at my feet, realising for the first time that it's your shoes I'm wearing. Funny. I thought I'd packed all your things away; it turns out I missed something, I guess.
The gravel crunches like normal, the ice cracks like normal. The wind blows like normal. I pull my hood tighter around my head like normal.
But the loneliness isn't normal. The empty space beside me is filled by my own shadow, which does nothing but make it worse. The heartache I feel right now isn't normal. The illness that's infecting my heart isn't normal.
The nauseating feeling isn't normal. The constant need to cry.
The exact reason I'm out in the cold, hoping it numbs me enough to calm down for literally even a second.
But the cold makes it harder to breathe. And the walk is a bad idea. Too many memories... I've started it now, so I owe it to her to finish it.
The grove seemingly beckons me, and I feel myself invisibly drawn towards it, an irresistible tug. Like a beacon of light and warmth.
I can feel the numbness fading the second the trees intertwine above my head, but it only makes me hear how ragged and uneven my breathing is. I crash into a tree, my vision turning white, and I hold it tightly.
Why did you leave me here? Why couldn't you bring me with you?
I gasp heavily, feel the tears freeze instantaneously on my cheeks. It stings, but I can't really feel it.
My legs shake, but I refuse to fall. This is the place where we used to dance under the moonlight, laughing, loving each other that little bit more. I still do that last bit, just not everything that comes before it.
After all, how can I dance under the moonlight by myself? Laugh and find humour by myself in a world without you in it?
And after everything, why am I still falling in love with you farther and farther each day? You're not coming back, so why can't my heart accept that? Why can't I just leave you in the past, where you are now, I guess.
Despite me wanting to see you in the present tense, all you are now is a piece of my past. But it's something that keeps that ache constant, that keeps that ache fresh and growing ever deeper.
The cold drives further into my heart, an uncomfortable feeling that filters into my bloodstream. Ice floods my body. I shiver, but you're not here to shelter me from the cold. Although, there isn't a lot you could do, because this isn't the normal coldness. It's an infectious coldness, one that slowly slithers its way around me, that makes its way into every crack, every crevice, leaving behind a trail of germs that manifest into a more volatile disease.
I can see you in my minds eye, twirling without a care under the trees, waiting for me to turn up at the dead of night. That playful spark in your eyes when you see me emerge from the shadows. The way you take my hand and pull me closer, kiss my lips softly. Squeeze me hand before twirling me. And then we dance for hours without end. Laughing and giggling and loving me.
And then the image is gone, fading away like a mist in a hurricane. It begins to slip away slowly, and then the images get torn and strewn about with a seeming vengeance. A horrible strength and power tears them from me, leaving me grasping at the floor, trying with everything to hold them in my hands.
I don't want to let you go again.
But they're torn away before I can even act, leaving me with nothing again, just an aching numbness that makes me fall apart all over again. before I can speak, or cry, I'm on my knees in the snow, the damp creeping up my trouser leg.
Every part of me is cold now, and there's nothing I can do about it.
I remember that last day. Still bright eyed. Still smiling. But you were weaker. Tired. Tried to stay awake for me. I told you to sleep.
You didn't wake up.
I can see it now. The bleeding, leeching white of the hospital room. The wires connected to you. The steady beeping of the machines, I can even hear that clear as a bell.
But I can't really see you. All I see his eyes, hair, lips, cheekbones. A shadow moving seamlessly in the dark. I can't put them to a face though. The face of you is incomplete somehow, almost like I looked at you wrong, didn't look at you enough.
I know that's wrong; I could never stop looking at you. Every time, you took me by surprise. But you've don't it again, only in a different way. You're fading before my very eyes. You're drifting into the wind dust particle by dust particle. Bit by bit. In small quantities I don't see it, but trying to make your face clear now tells me you've been fading from me for a while.
You only notice the small things when it's happened one too many times.
I look upwards, see snow flakes flutter gently down onto my face, land in my eyelashes. Make a persistent sting on my cheeks.
The moon sends beams of light down to earth, illuminating our grove. The snow glimmers and is reminiscent to glitter that you insisted we buy whenever we pass the crafts shop down the road.
The stars lay dotted out like freckles, lighting up the face in the dark. Your freckles were a map of my fingers. You let me trace them, let me tell you how much they completed you.
The freckles in the sky only alert the dark that there's always light. There's always light, and you just have to open your eyes.
The tears are warm on my cheeks, but it isn't long before they freeze, just like normal; as is routine when I take our route by myself.
I force myself to my feet, and start to sway on the spot, closing my eyes, letting my ears guide me. I hear music, but I can't tell where its coming from. And, with your shadow in my heart, and your shadow beside me, I start to dance.
I can almost pretend you're here, but I know that hand holding mine is fake. It's my imagination.
The music I hear amplifies, something of a ballad, and I raise my arms gracefully, letting the snow cover me completely. I dip low, I spin, and the snow flies off in all directions, hitting the floor with a soft thud. I open my eyes. It's like theres scorch marks where the snow lands, shocking the already settled snow.
But I don't care.
For I can dance without you, like we used to. Only it's different.
Different is good though, as you always used to tell me.
Different shakes things up. Deducts normality.
You shook up my world, and now I'm without you.
