Every day, it finds new cracks, new holes to take root in and I find myself hunched over old birthday cards reading and crying. It’s a raw wound, carelessly festering because I don’t know how to take care of it, to take care of me. I talk to you like you’re still here and the words spoken most frequently are “I miss you” and it grows in intensity each time I say it. Everything reminds me of you. Life is overwhelming. I’m losing track of days, each one feels so long and so short. An hour can feel like a lifetime when the sadness sinks in like a boulder into my chest. I wish I could feel that you’re here, but I know that you’re not. Sleeping is a chore I’m no longer good at. Looking at pictures of you makes me cry, but the thought of losing pieces of you makes me cry too. What am I going to do when your smell wears out of your hoodie? Never smell you again? That’s unbearable. But it will happen. One day I won’t be able to remember the various inflections of your voice, I won’t be able to remember the things you’d say to make me laugh when I was having a bad day. I try so hard to remember what all of your tattoos looked like, but I can’t. The x’s you put on the inside of your ankles. The weird HST hangman. The Millhouse one to cover up an old tattoo you no longer liked. Your ship with the zombie mermaid. The blue flowers. Your matching ghost hugs guy with the glasses and six fingers on each hand. They’re never going to line up when we hold hands again. We’re never going to fight again. Celebrate an anniversary again. Exist at the same time again. You’re just gone and this ache just grows and grows and grows and I fear that one day it will swallow me whole.