When I Lost You

[ 01 ]

I can see the sun from behind my sleep mask. It's supposed to be a black-out mask, but it doesn't work like the packaging promised. I've gotten so sensitive to light lately and I've tried everything, but without fail, my eyes ache open every morning at the same time the sun wakes up.

With a groan, I tear it off and fling it onto the empty pillow next to me, the one snuggling against my body to help hold in my body heat during the freezing nights. I finally fell asleep last night when it was technically the early hours of morning, the time when people do ghost hunting adventures, those weird few hours when it's not really tomorrow but not tonight either. No wonder it's called the witching hour.

Whatever hour it was, I've only been asleep for as long as a nap usually lasts. The floor is cold, even through my wool socks. I wander into the living room and open the curtains that used to be a lot greener, but they're faded now.

There it is again—the sun, planting songs in the throats of birds and glinting off the dewdrops that balance on the grasstips.

It should all be so lovely, and part of me buried deep in there still understands that it's beautiful. But I can't hold my thoughts on it. Every time I see something so annoyingly mundane and innocently pretty, all I can think about is how badly I want to take a photo of it and send it to her.

But I can't. So I take a picture of the grass anyway, make a mental note that I'll forget to edit it and post it somewhere later. Somewhere I know she'll see.

God, it's like I'm middle school or something. Do middle schoolers do that kind of stuff, actually? I guess so, since they're growing up with technology that didn't exist for me until I was a young adult.

Why do I love those mundane moments? Why do I notice, every afternoon when the wind blows, how the palm leaves rattle like some rickety sort of applause?

A year ago, I would have found some positive message in it. "It's like the tree is clapping for you," I would have told myself. "You're doing the best you can at this moment."

Not having her in my life doesn't feel like the best I can do.

The wind's not blowing yet; the earth hasn't been awake long enough. I crack the windows to get some fresh air flowing. It's more of a routine thing, but I know that there must be some health benefits from eating breakfast in the sunshine—

I stop. The sky is full of clouds and I can already tell from the gray-blue light that there won't be much sun today.

Awesome. Sunshine is one of the only things these days that makes me feel good. It lightens me up.

I might feel like shit, but I can still make bad puns.

I want to share that with her. But I can't. So I make tea instead.

The rhythm of talking to her doesn't make any sense. If it were a song, no one would be able to listen to it till the end. It would be a child clanging on pots and pans with a wooden spoon, and the dog barking, and an old shed door banging every time the breeze touched it.

Chaos. Pure noise.

I'm surprisingly looking forward to a mundane bowl of cereal. But as I'm sitting down in the chair where the sunshine had only yesterday toasted my back, my phone buzzes.

I don't know why I keep it on vibrate. Maybe I'm scared of the noise that I can't predict. That I can't expect every two days, or every week, or every morning at 7 am. It's afternoon for her, but I know her, and I know that she's always concerned she'll wake me up too early.

It's her.

Good morning, sort of, the text on the screen reads.

I reply with a tiny little sunshine. Are you questioning the good or the morning?

It's morning for you, right?

Yep, I reply. I send her the photo of the dewdrop. It's not edited.

Wow, early. Why are you awake? Did I wake you up?

I can hear her voice saying every syllable. You didn't wake me up, don't worry. I sleep with my phone on silent. Even God couldn't get through to me. Mostly because he's not in my list of emergency contacts.

From literally an ocean apart, I can hear her giggling.

It would be easier to not talk to her at all. This is so hard.

What are you doing right now?

I send her a photo of my tea. The bookshelf is in the background, and since it's dark, the steam is highlighted in the picture. One tendril is in a perfect spiral, better than what I can draw, and I'm an artist.

Do you have time to talk?

Every time she asks that I get nervous. That's how she started the conversation a few weeks ago when her girlfriend came up with yet another rule for our communication.

I shut that thought down with a shiver. Not now, I tell myself firmly. There's no reason I should allow myself to remember that. It's not propelling my life forward in any way. It's not putting me in a very good mood to talk—

My brain doesn't listen. I spin out of reality and into that dark memory.