“Hey There Lover, here you and I are, sharing a page. I wish we could share a hug again but you were…”

Hey There Lover, here you and I are, sharing a page. I wish we could share a hug again but you were so very dead by now. When you died you asked for me, and I couldn’t be there and I am so so sorry. I didn’t get to be there. Most nights I’m up and often I think of you until it’s too late to sleep or dream. I would’ve been there if I wasn’t so ashamed. When I left you and moved to California it felt like the right choice, healthy. It’s really ironic and cruel that my “healthy” choice ended with your dying alone. Not really alone but without me, and I’m still as much about myself as I ever was. I can think of endless excuses and reasons why I wasn’t there for you. They don’t mean anything now. I didn’t go to your funeral, and for days I wondered if you had imagined me there. But that’s self-centered again. What I wanted to say to you is that every other word but sorry and I love you is useless. If I had to give up all the words I knew in any language and pick only a few like a demented game, I would say “sorry, sorry, I love you.” Last year on the anniversary I trade to séance you. Sometimes the wind shuts the door behind me and I imagine it’s you, taking your brown scarf off and telling me about your day. When glasses break it’s you, and spoons fall it’s you, it’s you. I want you around all the time. You were perfect and I screwed it up. All I can say at the end of it all is that I will never do it again. Not love, I’ll never mistreat again. I never honored anything, but I will honor the hell out of your memory. I will always miss you and wish at least you could have lived a wonderful life without me. I will be true, not to myself because I’m a coward, but true to you as long as I live. And for the love of all that’s holy and beyond. Yours forever, X.