February 26, 2013. Today is 726 days.

March 9, 2011 was our two year anniversary.

            I could have written a list of a thousand better ways to spend our special day: taking a picnic basket filled with sandwiches, sweets, and sentimentality to your favorite park or walking along the seashore as the ocean kissed our toes or even watching sappy movies in a fort we’d built out of pillows. However, you had to be there and I loved you too much to spend our day without you.  

            It wasn’t the most ideal way to spend our anniversary, but I dealt with it. The funeral home smelled of flowers and despair; it was honestly a pleasant smell. I can still recall the white specks on the too-blue-to-be-blue flowers that were supposed to add a sense of peace to the room. They didn’t. Strangers in black wailed, familiar faces crumbled, friends tried to speak under gasps of air. Forcing down the walnut-sized lump in my throat, salt and almost metallic tasting blood seized my tongue. Tears rolled down my face while I gnawed on my cheeks until my mouth was raw. Your hands felt cold, almost frozen, against mine. I was used to holding your permanently cold hands but they were a different kind of cold today. Maybe it was because the home was so extremely icy, I probably would have seen my own breath if I breathed hard enough. Wiping away the tears, I leaned over to kiss your smooth, cold lips I’d been yearning for. It wasn’t the most ideal way to spend our anniversary, but I loved you too much to spend our day without you.

March 9, 2012 was our three year anniversary.

            It had been another year with you. Spreading the speckled, too-blue-to-be-blue flowers across the dewy grass, I leaned over to kiss the smooth, cold stone you’d been sleeping under.

Never shall I forget that night, that night that still haunts me 607 days later, which has thoroughly painted my life in black.

               Never shall I forget those few words that left perpetual scars beneath my heart, in my mind and on my bones.

               Never shall I forget the denial, the pain, the misanthropy that grew in the core of my body as the weeks dragged on without you.

               Never shall I forget that particular gleam in your fascinating eyes that suggested this was much more than lust.

               Never shall I forget the days we spent lousily under our warm covers, listening to nothing but the melodic thumps of our heartbeats.

               Never shall I forget those moments that life seemingly paused while I admired the beauty that your skin and bones have created.

               Never shall I forget these things that leave me anxious to run my hand through your hair as you welcome me at the gates.

               Never.

I have been missing you so much lately. 

I have chained my heart in the hopes of you coming home to me again. I have put these feelings of lust and love on hold. I have buried my happiness and smiles six feet below for you to dig up when you return. I have built a wall and I have given you the hammer. But you have not come home. You have not returned to unchain my heart or unravel my feelings or resurface my happiness. You have not come back to show me that everything will be okay. My walls are still up and I am still waiting for the day when you knock them down. I am still waiting for the day I can sleep like a child in your arms. But for now, I am restless in a bed too big for one.

I am completely unsure of why. Maybe it was the way your fingers glided through my hair right before we crawled under our sheets. Maybe it was because of the way our eyes toyed with each other.. a little too often. Maybe it was how your words danced around my aching heart while you spoke such sincere words of advice. But it could have been the way we disagreed over which salad dressing to use and how we bickered until we refused to eat. The way we hated to love each other and the way we loved to hate each other. Maybe that was it. But all I am sure of is that it has been 77 weeks and you are still next to me — running your pale fingers through my hair and loving me like never before.

It hurts to ponder, but my curiosities are more than eager to be fed. I’ll still ask if we’d be a whole if you were here. If we’d be me and you again.. But it’s out of my control and it’s the wildest of possibilities there could be. Impossible, I’ll have to say. But day to day, I stop and think about you and what we made together and how beautiful it was. I stop to smell the roses, to smile at all the positivity you’ve conjured up inside me that I never knew I still possessed. Thank you, dear. You are my sunshine.

The moon and stars mean that my mind has officially been put into work and it is time to convert these meaningless thoughts into something “beautiful.” 
All my life, I have wanted to do something extraordinary. Cliché, I know. But there came a time when every single day was a brand new extraordinaire and every single day was a chapter of its own in my inordinate novel of recollections, adventures, despair. That time? With you. Every single day was spent in your arms, in your fingers, in your head. Everyday, I would just stare into your pretty eyes and the sun was brighter and the sky was bluer and life was dandier. Everyday. That was my extraordinaire. That was my pride and joy. You. You were the butterflies I could still get after years of being together and the heat I would feel on my cheeks after blushing for so long and the way I can still remember the amount of raspiness in your  voice. The time we spent together resembles more of just an ordinary story to others.. but you’ve helped me fulfill the feeling of going above and beyond a repetitive life. 
Today, I will come across pictures, stuffed animals, bracelets and such and I promise, I stop and think about you for more than you would ever want me to. I have built my life around literature and run-on sentences and writing without contractions. I have built my life around the remnants that you left behind for me and the memories that you and I made so happily together. And I can reassure you, it is a uniquely-lived life. Here’s to thinking that you and I were oh, so infinite in the times we spent together. And here’s to seeing you again, soon enough. Good night.

The sun’s down and the darkness has come. And there’s nothing - absolutely nothing - that I wouldn’t do for one more night of kisses, laughter and laying in your arms. I don’t know how I’ve made it this far and how I’ve accomplished so much without you on the sidelines, rooting for me. If I close my eyes for awhile, you’re there. Your unusually beautiful eyes, your jumbled brown hair, your obnoxiously entertaining laugh, your prolonged fingers. You’re here.. But you aren’t. And how I wish you were.. Just for one more night. I loved you more than the birds and the bees and the sun and the moon and the stars. I loved you more than me. With a love so reminiscent, I can still feel your fingers lingering across my skin five-hundred twenty-eight days later.. If I close my eyes, you’re still here with me and I’m no longer alone. And with that, I can drift off to sleep.