Night Owl Bard

But I think mine didn't.

My love translated into longing, metamorphosed into grief. Grief for a person still alive.

I remember every small detail.

I remember the feeling of your hand in mine. How soft it was, and how you carried a skin moisturizer everywhere and tried to convince me to use it too.

I remember that you liked to lie on top of me and just exist for a while. "It's like sleeping while awake," you said once, with your face against my neck, your hair tickling me, and your breath giving me the best chills.

I remember that you weren't ticklish on almost any conventional part, but if someone touched your knee, all that came out of you were laughs.

I remember your breath steadying into a peaceful sleep after I spent a while running my fingers through ridiculously large strands of blueish hair.

I remember how my cold body was warm compared to yours. "We warm each other up," you said, while hugging me during a horror movie session.

I remember every long night spent awake amidst papers. Drawings, stories, ideas; entire worlds created just for us, characters we called our children.

"I'm afraid I won't make it to 20. I'm afraid of not wanting to," I confessed to you once, through tears. "I'm afraid of the future, of losing everyone I love."

"One day, when I'm 80 and you're 82, we have white hair and our life is sitting on the porch and gossiping, I'm going to laugh and say 'I told you so,'" you answered, simply, while hugging me.

I was afraid of growing old, I was afraid of being left by everyone I loved, afraid of being too much to handle and not enough, of being too difficult, too broken to be loved.

But I wasn't afraid of losing you; I never found anyone who fit better with me. You helped put together every broken piece of mine, held them together with the attention you showed me and everything else I loved.

You read every story I wrote, because you knew they were parts of my soul poured onto paper.

You listened to every song I sent, because you knew the only way I find my voice is by singing.

Now I am 24. I made it past 20. I achieved things I didn't think I would achieve.

But you are no longer here. It's been almost 4 years.

I no longer have anyone to hug me at night and talk about everything and nothing.

I no longer have anyone to read my stories, listen to my songs and sing duets with me, or binge-watch something with me with the interest you showed.

"I don't know if I'll ever forgive my father for what he did. It changed me. I lost a part of myself that I think I'll never get back." You told me that in one of our last conversations. I remember thinking that I had lost those parts of you too.

I remember noticing you leaving little by little.

Without speaking, without saying goodbye, without explanations. Just small stolen moments, pieces of routine missing, parts of you that no longer fit into the overall picture I knew intimately.

Those pieces of yours that you lost were the pieces that kept you close to me, and I lost you long before you left. I lost many people and many things in life. I lost my father because of his choices, I lost part of my family's love because of a truth they couldn't live with, I lost my adolescence fighting to survive my own mind, I even lost my love for myself for a while.

I wasn't afraid of losing you, and I think that's what hurt the most, it came out of nowhere, caught me off guard, a wound caused by the last person I expected holding a weapon.

I don't know if this pain will ever pass. I've already forgiven you for everything; I've gotten older, more experienced, I've healed, accepted myself, found myself again.

But the space you occupied was never filled.

It's funny, I loved you in many ways. Platonically, familially, romantically. When I talk to people, they tend to focus on the romantic love, but that wasn't the biggest loss. You were never mine (not as possession, I would never think that of you, but mine to love, care for, protect, give myself to), you never loved me the way I loved you, and I was okay with that. You were happy and that was enough. I miss a second part harmonizing with me, I miss an editor for my stories, I miss phone calls that last all night long, I miss lying with someone in a tangle of limbs and watching questionable movies. I don't miss my romantic love; I miss my platonic soulmate, my partner in everything, the warmth for my cold, the sound for my silence, the moon for my tides.

My love now manifests in bittersweet memories, in duets where only one part is being sung, in phantom sensations born from memories of hugs, from the remembrance of your scent, the sound of your voice. Stored drawings accidentally found during cleanings, notes for world-building, plots, playlists created by two people that now only one of them listens to.