I don’t miss you as much as I should.
Or maybe I still miss you too much.
I never understood grief very well.
I was always told I grieve too long,
the “stages are too long and you get stuck”.
Ten years in October
and I never reached acceptance.
I guess I did get stuck.
I blew right past bargaining,
I wasn’t wasting time.
Straight through to anger,
before settling down into pure, unadulterated grief.

I miss you.

And when I don’t miss you enough,
I force myself to miss you harder.
Because no one speaks about you anymore.
And I can’t tell your story,
Because I got stuck in the stages,
lost swirling in the catacombs,
a pan’s labyrinth of nostalgia.

Sometimes,
I wonder what you would think of me.
In the world you said you couldn’t fit into anymore,
because there was no space
because you loved me in all the ways that I couldn’t love you,
all the ways I learned to love you, too late.

I wonder if you would be proud of me for walking away,
or staying so long…
I wonder what you’d say to me when I told you stories of how I never quite got it right.

I think you’d tell me to write more.
I think you’d tell me to love less,
because you never thought anyone was worthy.

I hope we would still yell at the top of our lungs when we were angry,
but never forget an “I love you.”

I can’t hear your voice as clearly as I used to.
But when I close my eyes tightly,
I can still make out how you looked at me,
All those nights on your front steps,
under the stars,
When we truly believed we’d never have to miss each other at all.