The Unnamed

Confession

Today is the day.
The day that I am going to tell him.
Tell him how I truly feel, and see if he feels the same way.

I'll admit it, I'm afraid. It had been a while since I last saw him, and even then we didn't leave on the highest of notes.
That didn't stop me from loving him though. I never stopped loving him.
Even when we parted ways.
Even when he said goodbye and didn't look back at me.
That was the day my heart broke.
"It's better like this," He had said. As if those words could form a bandage for my broken heart. They didn't heal, they only made it hurt more.

I walk up the road, passing by his neighbors, their homes blurring away as I limit my attention to the goal ahead of me. To the one destination that mattered. A bouquet of flowers gripped tight in my trembling hands, my breath creating fog in the cool, still winter night.
Everything's quiet, nearly completely silent except for the quiet, forgotten chatter of one residence to the next. The stars stood still in the sky, almost as if they were holding their breath for me, waiting for the answer I knew that I probably wasn't going to get. My breath caught.

In front of me was his home, a place that I hadn't been to for such I long time, as I couldn't force myself to face the truth. My eyes started welling up with tears as memories, both good and bad, flooded back into the front of my mind. I couldn't do this.

I took shelter behind a tree quickly, allowing the tears to run down my face as I sobbed. The flowers fell from my hands and onto the ground in front of me as I collapsed, not able to withstand the weight of my body that suddenly seemed so heavy. Heavy like my heart.

I looked up with quiet determination and dried off my tears. After a quick glance I picked the bouquet back up and rose to my feet, mentally prepared to do this. With a sigh, I rounded the tree and faced my fate.

The stone in the ground stared back at me, cold and unfeeling of the layer of snow on top of and around it. The snow that had fallen remained untouched, a frozen blanket that covered him as he rested in his eternal sleep. I took a shuddering breath and approached the grave, clutching my flowers like a lifeline. My footprints remained behind me, leaving a path for me to retrace myself, reminding me that I could turn back. I kept walking forward.
I finally came within touching distance of the gravestone, and I proceeded to kneel beside it, shivering as the wet snow seeped easily through my dark jeans and touched my skin. I gently put the flowers down in front of the stone and leaned back on my heels, examining it. With a deep breath, I closed my eyes.
"Hey." I started. I was met with a piercing silence, making me sigh. "It's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't come to visit for...what was it, three months? That long, huh. I'm sorry about that." I awkwardly brushed a strand of hair out of my eyes and opened them, once again looking at the gravestone. It had a thin layer of snow covering the engravings bestowed upon it. Without so much as a thought I brushed the snow off of it, revealing the name and the date of death of the person that I had loved, that I still loved. I felt tears fill up my eyes again, but I restrained them. "I have been wanting to tell you something for, well, for a while now. Since before your death, when you were alive. I never got to say it to your face because I-I'm a coward. It's difficult to tell you this even now, when you can't hear me. Although I wish that you could, it would make this all worth it. I'm sorry. I-I I love you. A lot," Tears began to flow down my face again, the chill of winter making my eyes sting and the trails they left behind burn my skin. I dropped my head down to face the ground and closed my eyes again. "I just want you back."
A spot of coldness spread on my neck, making me look up. Snow was steadily falling from the sky, creating another layer on the ground, a fresh, soft layer to cover the Earth. I took one last look at the grave before sighing again. The bouquet was quickly vanishing underneath the snow, as if the ground was trying to take it as it's own. I managed to crack a sad smile.
The night left me like that, sitting on the frozen earth slowly being covered with the white powder next to the grave of the one I love. His neighbors were silent as they were being buried even deeper, but it was as if they knew that I was here, a living, breathing person. It was almost a comfort.