Nothing. 

My mind is blank. There is nothing to think about when the world I see is bleak and grey. They ask sympathetic questions that really aren’t meant to be answered. Maybe because they don’t want to know the truth. Or maybe they don’t actually care to know.  

Ironically, no one ever tells you that missing them would be the easiest part of grieving. They only tell you that it will get better in due time. That the cries I suppress will be nothing but a pained memory. But that’s what they say, so we will walk through this plain desperately trying to believe it’s true.  

The memories, however, floodgate my thoughts like a tidal wave submerged in a tornado. It sucks you in only to throw you right back out. It drowns out the world while you suffocatingly gurgle the everlasting saltwater in your mouth. 

I once thought the correct explanation for my pain would fill the emptiness inside, but I think it’s the salt that tries to purify the wound. The salt that stings. 

….. 

I was five when I first met Him. We both lived in the same neighborhood. Lived on the same street, Wild Oak Lane. Went to the same school. Sat at the same lunch table. Rode the same Bus 56 every day with the exception of his rather absurd belief in the functions of alarm clocks. Shared our crushes and proposed scenarios that would end with them being with us. But never how we truly felt deep inside. Never how he truly felt. Nor I… 

It was like existing in separate worlds. As though his mind was somewhere else. Distant to the world around him. I wanted to understand him. To feel the things he felt because there were times I thought he didn’t feel at all. I wanted to know if he feels that why that I do. 

Maybe I’m selfish for wanting something so sacred? Maybe I have known the whole time? Ever since that day. That moment. That millisecond. I wanted to understand his lies… 

I still visit that street. Once a week to be exact, but I could never bring myself to go on the day it happened. It’s a reminder that we live in a cold, distant world from ourselves. 

Love 

But what does that even mean? I searched it up a couple of times on a whim but none of the answers seem to satisfy what I felt. 

Love is an intense feeling of affection. 

Love is letting someone come before your needs. 

Love is  

Love. 

But how? All these thousands of millions of responses across the internet implode into my head, and yet none of them exemplify this feeling. This feeling fighting against me. How can I feel such a way when he doesn’t know my real name. He doesn’t even know the real me. I don’t even know the real him… But I think that was the point. I didn’t know him, so I was able to create what it is I see when I walk out the door every morning.  

The first moment I figured out what it meant was the last moment I saw him before he left. We were seventeen and he missioned out to France. I wanted to object. To say no don’t go, but I knew that would mean nothing when his eyes glistened for the first time seeing his ticket. His way out.  

When I saw his smile, my heart lapsed. It split into two. No, into fifty million. All the little shards spread across the airport’s dingy floor effortlessly, watching him exit into Terminal 6. I guess the art of letting go was mastered by me that day.  

I imagined I would break through the guards, headstrong in all. I would grab his arm and drag him back to our normal. Our routine. He would love me. He would let me see the face I once built. A beautiful tragedy. Ironic. 

I feel that most sentences start with probabilities than it does actions. I can make up all sorts of illusionary colloquies in this empty mass of space. Yet, it could never bring me to formulate the words vocally.  

I want to drown in the water I grew up in. So it will be familiar and known. I want to be alone and isolated. So no one will stop me. No one will try and say it is not my fault. That his death would have happened anyway you look at it. 

I lay in my room now and these thoughts never stop. They never go away. I cry but never say his name. And I even pray— 

“Bela?” A distant voice interrupts making me groan from the exhaustion. 

“Bela? Hun, you’re going to be late for school, come on!” I recognize the smell of bagels burning in the toaster oven through my grogginess. I jump haphazardly through the vines hanging from my ceiling blocking my path to the door. Even my room doesn’t want me to leave and see Him… 

But the scariest part of it all is that his death hasn’t even happened yet. And I am the only one that knows…