The house is breathing. Deep, billowing gasps of frigid air. Expanding and contracting like an accordion made of walls and wood and glass. The windows rattling like my neglected, rotten teeth.
My own breath is loud and heavy. Every time I exhale it is a sigh more than simply breathing. I walk around this place, talking to myself, talking to him hoping that somehow he hears me. So lost now. Unanchored. Drifting so far away from every piece of who I have always been. My identity truly a giant question mark. All of these memories like dreams, reliving them over and over and over. Drifting further and further with every recollection.
This isn’t only a loss of him, it’s a loss of myself. Of who I am, of who I was. It’s a loss of the only home I have ever known. The only person who understands it all. Who understands me. Who I trusted with everything, ever, always. Who was my protector. My safety net. Who I could call anytime and chat about anything.
It washed away in sheets of rain, and blinding rays of sun, bleached and drowned and drifted far away so fast, you blinked and it was gone. The days and weeks and months and years, all a blur. Fuzzy memories and nostalgia and forgotten people and distant places. Decades gone and youth gone and lost in-between who you think you are and who you have become.
I will carry him with me in the pockets of my mind. In the nooks and crannies, the building blocks of me. He will step with me as I move through the world, he will belong with me always.
I used to observe, now I close my eyes. Shuttered.
I can feel the past weighing on me, hard and heavy, buried underneath it, smothered.