You are the absence I kiss on my wedding day.

Have I really been looking for you in everyone all along or is it just my mind that constantly sees you in everyone I meet? Either way, it is just crazy how I keep seeing you in everyone as if you are still around.

You are everyone I meet while I might not be anybody you ever cross paths with. Tell me, Love, do I really celebrate your absence or am I just too devastated to admit that now you are not mine to hold anymore?

Having you out of my sight with hands beyond my grip, I started to live the life I haven’t thought of ever living, where I can easily see you through the mirror, across the window, beneath my blanket, under the shower, or even as simple as having your ghost sit at the dining table.

We would finish the breakfast later than usual, talk more about the future and the kids we planned on raising, the dogs we had always wanted to adopt, the car we dreamed of buying, the place we never moved to, and the house we would have lived in.

Eventually, everything we had and we wanted to have are now nothing more than the dreams I keep inside a jar hoping it to explode one day with you coming back, knocking on the door.

Because no matter how suffocating it may seem, you are still the ghost I talk to at night when the sleep refuses to meet my eyes. You are the apple I bite when everything tastes bitter and bland. You are the book I re-read when the movie starts to show no fun. You are the seed I sow when the flowers fail to fruit and the leaves start to wither. You are the umbrella I put on beneath the pouring rain.

You are the ring never fits, the light that dims, the love that never comes back, the absence I kiss on my wedding day, the grief I forever cry over, the past that haunts me like a nightmare, the memories never fade. You are my trembling hand, my beating heart, my blinking eye, my restless mind, my weary soul—a part of me that I can’t release, a love that I can’t rewrite.

You are the scar that refuses to fade, the ache that never heals, the wound I leave open, the pain that starts to feel comfortable. You are the goodbye I never wanted to say, the promise that shattered, the forever that slipped through my fingers.

You are everything I have ever had, and perhaps, even after all this time, you are everything I still wish I could save.