The change in the air from humid to crisp, warm to slightly cool – puts a loud ringing bell on your death – as I ready myself for my birthday, then your birthday, Halloween, our wedding anniversary, Thanksgiving, our proposal anniversary, Christmas, and then ringing in another new year without you.

This time of year filled with holidays and family and love and my favorite weather and atmosphere, leaves way for a big red button on your forever absence – a button I’m forced to push again and again and again, letting off sirens of being left here on Earth alone, without my person. A future without you still frightens me, as panic and anxiety curl their way back into my bed each night, grabbing the blankets and stealing my sleep.

I try hard to recall the earlier days of this grief, and to remind myself that there was a time I could not see anything except darkness and pain. A time when autumn leaves and sunsets and brightly lit moons and candy apples and fried dough with cinnamon-sugar, all felt and looked and tasted like grey and blackness and death to me – because you were dead, so I could no longer see the beauty in anything. Everything was blank.

It took almost 3 years to see the beauty again, and to look at the autumn leaves again and really notice them, and to care again, to really care instead of just pretending. Now, today, I see the colors. I feel the rain. I taste the sweet cold ice-cream.

I feel your presence with every bite. I hear your voice faintly, in the silence of my own. I see your blue eyes, inside the pale sky. You are everywhere.

But I am selfish. It isn’t enough for me. I want more.

You are everywhere, but you are also nowhere.

You are not here, curling your way into our bed each night, grabbing the blankets and stealing my sleep.

And the air changes from humid to crisp,
crisp to cold,
and the frost takes shape on the windows.
And with every biting, winter breath,
Oh, how I miss you.

I miss you.
I miss you.
I miss you.