Saturn - joshler

Angel.

No nightmares come that night.

Waking up to an empty bed, Tyler finds, is one of the worst feelings he's ever felt. Reaching across the thin sheets- their color now dull and inferior in every way compared to the colors he'd felt the night prior- feeling nothing occupying the cold space is like feeling every earthquake at once. Every shift of the ocean and earth bearing down on Tyler's shoulders.

Except there isn't nothing , there's a note.

It's not surprising, tucking the pale yellow corners in between his fingers, but the notion never fails to leave him completely breathless.

Unfolding the paper wrinkled by sleep Tyler realizes how tragic it is. To find yourself in another person.

Because when they leave, they take along the best parts of you, your somethings, and the emptiness of you is their beginning.

The time he was given was never enough. He thinks back to the hospital, the nights tucked under Josh's arm, the smell that was so distinctly himlingered so strongly. "I want you to live because I know you can." He'd said, "You're worth so much more than you could ever imagine. You can live."

Another me in you, dead. Another you in me, ripped away.

The note itself, reads, 'Live. -j'

Tyler wants to say he can't. He wants to say he didn't know how, until Josh came. But that just isn't true. It never was. He always knew how to live: he just needed to be reminded.

Josh was that reminder, that the earth is still spinning whether he's on it or in it, that the grass will be green and the sun will still shine.

Laying in his cold empty bed he feels the denim cuffs of his jeans scrape his tired ankles, and the zipper of his hoodie digging into his back. It's easy to laugh then, because at least he feels it, and knows he's okay.

Theirs really was an earth shattering, and gruesome love. A love that made your stomach hurt. A love that made you wish you were dead.

"I will," Tyler says out loud, the humidity of the rain that came before his revelation clings strongly to his cheeks, now straining with a melancholy smile. He speaks to the air, the moon, and the stars that all belong to him, "Only for you."

•

Life after Josh is difficult, but not impossible.

The nightmares come and go, the plot never changes, the grief always lasts, but Tyler accepts it.

His mother still worries, holding him tighter than ever as he sobs into her chest and tells her "I loved him, I still do." She never understands, but she holds, and she loves because she knows how.

He goes to church and rediscovers his passion for believing in more than what you can see, but he also respects the fact that there always has been, and always will be more than just god, just a boy, or just one ending to his story.

Sometimes he thinks of the hospital, and the pills. The shrill sounds of the highway below lovers on the roof, and how easy it could've been to jump. He writes it down and visits it later.

It's sunny afternoons that he revels in now. He drives to bookstores, and the flower shop on the corner, where he's befriended a florist who cuts him a bouquet of pink roses every week.

Tyler takes being alone less seriously now, and uses the time to think until he can't think anymore.

He thinks, and he shows up to family meals. He thinks, and decides he wants to go back to school. He thinks, and he realizes, the way Josh spoke, and moved, and thought about life. The way he took the happiness inside himself and shoved it down your throat- he filled you with it until it was pouring out your ears. It was never a moment of strong reflection or grief. He didn't have to go through stages of denial or acceptance. It was one of their shared nothings. The sky is often blue, water is always wet, and Josh is Tyler's angel.

Tyler remembers Josh's smile at mostly opportune moments; ones sat in his room at his computer, finishing the letters he'd never understood, it rings loud and oh so beautifully in his ears. He writes a reply to an "I love you," older than even the first actual one.

'Be safe. -j'

'Always. -t'