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Long before I was in love with him, we’d been threaded together in that permanent way that happened when your childhoods were interwoven. When you grew with someone. When they knew versions of you that no one else did. There was no erasing memories like that. There was no way to pretend that they didn’t go right on living beneath your skin for your entire life.
That was the way of grief, I was realizing. It was a barrage of pain that was so unbearable that it made you numb. And then out of nowhere, something made you feel again and the cycle started over from the beginning.
A hot tear slid down my cold temple, disappearing into my hair. I could feel him in the dirt. The wind. The piney scent of the trees. Johnny was gone, but he hadn’t left this place. He hadn’t left me.
What could we possibly say? I couldn’t even pretend to know how you could take a whole life, a whole person, and put it into words. Goodbye is a lost language. A silent one.
It was one thing to share a life, to share memories and spaces. But this child growing inside of me that neither of us planned was made by the two of us. It was the place Micah and I—our bodies and blood and even our souls—came together. It was a whole new story waiting to be told.
