New Places- The Duality of Grief

It felt good to visit places you have never been. Relieving.

Where I wouldn’t feel your image slip through the confines of my memory and take form as the whispers of laughter, the vagueness of forgotten words; the ghost of you, and the skeletal remains of our moments, withering away in the shadows. Lost to impermanence, as all eventually is. My eyes betray me. They force your image into spaces you once were. My mind, an accomplice, lures our moments to the surface. And wave after wave pushes and pulls beneath my skin, cold and warm and soothing and suffocating. Wrenching. Relieving.

And I smile because you’re there, and I ache because you’re not, because you’re gone and nothing that ever was will ever be again. And I curse my treacherous body for inciting longing, for making your absence known deeper and greater, for wanting desperately to be with you again, no matter how fleeting in nature it’s methods may be; wrecking and ripping and tearing up at the deep set wounds for just a moment in the illusion of your presence. And I resent the undeniable; that it was worth it. That I need it. That it is better than stepping foot on grounds you have never walked, or making memories that you can never be a part of.