Three years later....

22 Apr 2026

I sat in the back seat of the car. We drove in silence… I think. Or maybe I was too lost inside my own head to hear anything at all. All I remember is negotiating. With God. With reality. With the universe. Begging it— to let you stay, to take me instead. I kept pinching myself, again and again, trying to wake up from what had to be a nightmare. I said the prayers. The same prayers you told me would save me. They didn’t. When the car stopped, I didn’t wait. I ran. Into the house— filled with cries The same house that once held all my happiness. But that day I realised— it was never the house. It was you. You sitting by the window, waiting for me. You making my favourite food. Your smile. Your laugh. Your presence filling every corner. And now— you were lying there. Still. Cold. Blue. And just like that, everything was gone. I sat next to you, staring, waiting, hoping— that this would turn into one of those miracle stories, the ones where people wake up like nothing ever happened. But you didn’t. It’s been more than three years since that night. And somehow it still feels unfinished. The regret hasn’t left. It sits with me— quiet, constant. All the things I never said, all the love I never put into words, still stuck somewhere inside me. Grief is strange. I think I’ve learned to live with it. Or at least to carry it quietly. But I still can’t place that word next to you. Saying it makes everything collapse again. So I don’t. Instead I say I died that night I speak about you in the present tense— like you’re just in another room. I talk about life with you and life after you in the same breath. I still cry— not loudly, just enough to feel it pass through me. And I still remember everything. Your scent. Your skin. Your voice. And in my dreams— I am still in your arms.