Remember Me

9:S

The early November air hung heavy, cold enough to sting my cheeks, but I barely felt it. I should've felt it, but I didn't. Not really.

The vodka had burned away most of the sensation by now, leaving me in that familiar haze I'd grown so used to. I sat in front of my mom's statue, the same spot I always ended up, legs tucked underneath me, skirt damp from the grass. It was the only place that felt like home anymore. The bottle of vodka nestled between my fingers was half-empty but not forgotten.

I lifted the bottle to my lips, taking another long sip, the liquid burning its way down my throat. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, staring up at the angel's face, her expression so peaceful. It was a peace I'd never find. Not here. Not anywhere.

I was waiting again. For him. For Alex.

He hadn't come in weeks.

I still came, though, every night, hoping. Maybe tonight would be different. Maybe tonight he'd walk through the gates like he used to, hood up, shoulders slouched, like he was carrying the weight of the world. I'd sit here and wait for him, the quiet stretching between us. He never said much, but I didn't need him to.

Each night, I'd wait and wait, and he never came.

I couldn't remember his face. Not clearly, anyway. It was blurred, like everything else in my life lately. I couldn't remember the colour of his eyes, I couldn't remember if he was tall or short. It was a blur now, like a smudge in my mind I couldn't quite focus on.

But his voice... God, I remembered his voice. That low rasp, heavy with something I understood all too well. His words echoed in my head, even when I didn't want them to. His words lingered in the graveyard, in the air, in my mind, like ghosts I couldn't shake.

"Love is beauty," I'd told him once, my words slurred from the vodka, my head heavy with too many thoughts. But even then, I wasn't sure I believed it.

I don't think he did, either. I think he wanted to. Maybe a part of him even did, but not enough. Not enough to hold him here, wherever he was. Wherever he was now, he wasn't with me in this graveyard.

And that, I realized with a hollow pang, was a kind of answer in itself.

I stood up, the world tilting a little as I did, but I steadied myself against the angel statue. The peaceful face stared down at me, the same cold, unchanging expression. I took one last swig, draining the bottle, then tossed it into the grass. It didn't matter. None of it did.

I swayed on my feet as the alcohol buzzed through me. I looked around the empty graveyard, my eyes scanning the dark shapes of headstones, but there was no one there. No Alex. Just me, like always.

I walked slowly, weaving between the headstones, my feet dragging against the wet earth. The vodka was thick in my head, blurring the edges of the world around me, making it all feel like a half-remembered dream.

The path was familiar now; I didn't even need to think about where I was going. I passed row after row of graves, some old and weathered, others newer.

That's when I saw it. A grave that looked fresh, the dirt still unsettled, the flowers lying limp like they'd just been placed there. Something about it made me stop. Maybe it was the newness of it, or maybe it was just the way the moonlight cast a soft glow on the stone.

I stepped closer, squinting to read the name carved into the granite: Henry Douglas Howard. January 12 2001 – September 24, 2018. My breath caught in my throat. He was my age.

I stared at the dates, feeling a dull ache somewhere in my chest that I couldn't quite name. There was something too familiar about it—about the way life could just... stop. About how someone could be here one day, and the next, they were a name on a stone, nothing more.

My eyes drifted lower, to the inscription beneath.

"There is beauty everywhere, remember to see it."

I stilled, my breath coming out in uneven puffs in the cold night air. There is beauty everywhere...

Alex had talked about beauty. He used to sit with me in the quiet and talk about how he was always searching for something beautiful, something that could make everything feel less heavy, less suffocating. But he could never quite find it. I could hear it in his voice, how the beauty he talked about always seemed just out of reach.

I blinked, staring at the words on the unfamilar grave, the weight of them pressing down on me. Maybe beauty was something you found when you stopped looking. Maybe Alex had found his somewhere else, somewhere far from this graveyard.

Maybe that's why he stopped coming.

I knelt down, my fingers grazing the edge of the stone. I didn't know Henry, not at all, but I felt an odd kinship with him, with the fact that he was gone now, too. Another person who had slipped away, just like my mom, just like so many others.

"There is beauty everywhere..." I whispered to myself, the words almost lost in the night.

I stood up, my legs shaky beneath me, and took one last look at the grave. The moonlight cast a pale glow over the inscription, making the words seem softer, kinder. There was something comforting about it, something that made me feel like maybe Alex had found the beauty he was looking for.

Maybe that's why he wasn't here. Maybe he didn't need the graveyard anymore. I took it as a sign, Alex had found his beauty elsewhere. He wasn't coming back for me.

I started walking again, feeling lighter somehow, though I wasn't sure why. I left the fresh grave behind, the name it belong to already erased from my drunken mind. The night felt different now, less suffocating, less heavy.

Alex wasn't coming back. But maybe that was okay.

Maybe, wherever he was, he'd finally found what he was looking for. Maybe he had finally found the beauty he spent so long searching for, the peace that always seemed just out of reach. I liked to think that he was out there somewhere, not lost in the darkness like I sometimes feared, but resting in a place where everything felt lighter, softer. Laughing with friends, lying on a beach, looking at the stars. Finding the beauty.

But I knew, that even if I didn't know his face, or his last name — I'd always remember him.

It was strange, how someone could leave such a deep imprint on you, even when so much of them was a mystery. I couldn't recall the exact shape of his eyes, or the way his smile curved, but his voice—his words—they were etched into me, like a song that plays over and over in your head. I remembered the things he told me in the stillness of the graveyard, the moments we shared when it felt like the world had gone quiet and all we had were each other's unspoken truths. He had been searching for something, for someone to understand the weight he carried, just as I was.

And though we hadn't known each other long, and though we'd been strangers in almost every way, we'd been connected by something deeper. A shared pain.

I'd remember him in the way he made me feel seen, in the way he spoke about beauty and loss as if they were two sides of the same coin. I'd remember how he could sit beside me in silence, not needing to fill the empty spaces with words, because we both knew there was nothing left to say that could make the weight of it all any easier.

I never knew where he came from, or where he was going, but he'd been a part of my life, if only for a brief moment. And maybe that was all that mattered. Maybe it wasn't about how long someone stays, but how they leave their mark.

Even if I never saw him again, even if I couldn't place his face in a crowd, I'd always remember the way he made me feel less alone.

And I wondered if, wherever he was, he would remember me, too.