This Love: Spencer Reid

four

I spent the next few days jumping at phone calls, turning my head whenever a door opened, rereading text messages

hoping i would find you somewhere.

hoping i would find you in my faded smile

in your apartment, as i cleaned out your rooms while your mother cried.

in coffee, which i don't even like that much but maybe somehow i'll taste you on my tongue during a sip.

but i don't find you.

i don't know a lot of things about loss. i don't know how to deal with it or how to move on from it, but i do know how to remember you. and sometimes reliving the moments i had with you in my head makes the hole in my heart feel a little more like a small dent instead.

i get scared sometimes, too.

i get scared that one day i won't remember your face.

i'll have to think in order to remember your middle name,
i'll forget what your apartment looked like and all of our conversations will blur into only a few that i'll hold onto and laugh about from time to time.

smell is the last memory to go.

i get scared that your sweaters that i cling to myself when everything is a little too cold will eventually stop smelling like you

and then maybe

maybe i'll forget you entirely.

that's the scariest part of it all.

everyday i spend without you i can feel you getting further from me.

i fear one day someone will mention your name, and i'll turn around.

hoping maybe i'll see your face.

hoping you too, will recognize me. hoping that you'll tell me nothing that happened was my fault and that we can rewrite your story, together.

but of course i won't see you.

because you're dead.

and then i'll remember it.

you'll be one of ex boyfriends that i'll cry about sometimes.

except you died, so i'll never get to know how our story would have ended.

would it have ended happily, both of us deep and old in a marriage, dying together, content?

or would it have ended when we were still young, our shouting trying to drown the other one's out? the dishes in our apartment scattered across the floor, the block button on my phone hovering over your name?

i'll move on, eventually. i'll date more people, but none of them will fill in the hole.

some of them will probably dig it deeper.

i'll hope time will fly, but it won't.

sometimes i'll probably wish i could forget about you.

but i will always remember it all too well.

i'll remember how i'd loved you.

even after i saw the hate behind your sweet eyes and messy statistics.
even after i heard casually cruel words leave the same sugary lips that you used to plant soft kisses on my cheeks.
even after i saw you kill right in front of me.

the loss of your presense would still hurt the same. it probably wouldn't even matter what you did or didn't do because at night, i would still be crying into my pillow about everything that happened to you regardless.

that's another thing that hurts so bad about this all.

your loss.

it's obvious, i know that.
but i feel so alone.
and you're actually gone this time.