Three years ago
my best friend died.

He got too close to the water,
they said,
and they named it "accidental".
And that was that.

I never bought that.
I think he just..
gave up.
I couldn't tell you why,
not an answer
you would accept anyway.
Just a feeling that lives
deep in my soul.
A feeling that tells me
that he knew
what his decision would mean,
and he jumped.

Took all my secrets
and demons with him.
He took
all the things
I'd only ever told him,
and he buried them,
then he left me here.
Without him.

I've never felt that kind of pain before.

I thought
I'd felt it all.
But I was wrong.

That night I sat on my floor,
listening to the same song on repeat.
The tears refused to stop,
along with the shakes,
so I got drunk
and tried not to feel.

But that didn't work either.
So I drank more.
Cried more.
Smoked another cigarette

and I tried to write him down.

But I just stared at the screen.
Blank.
Waiting for words that never came.
I think I thought
that if I wrote it down,
it would be too real.
It would mean that he was really gone,
that there was no going back.
And if it was real,
then I would have to miss him.
I would have to let myself feel that..
And I wasn't ready for that.

So I told myself that
I would wait to write him down,
wait until
I didn't miss him so much.

I would wait until the words came.

But they never came.
No words came.
Eventually
I refused to write at all
until I could write my best friend down,
until I could tell OUR story.

But suddenly,
three years had come and gone,
and I didn't miss him
any less,
and I didn't write
any more stories,
and it didn't change anything.

At all.