You’re fine. You’re fine. You’re fine.

And then for the first time in weeks you truly laugh. You don’t feel the lingering weight of grief of your shoulders. You laughter carries through the heartache and the pain.

But you look over to see their beautiful face laughing with yours, and reality comes crashing back down again. They are not there.

It hurts all over again, like a fresh wound.

How could you be happy when they

are gone?

You hate yourself for forgetting their absence. You hate yourself for being happy without them there.

Your love has nowhere to go.

It hurts. It aches. It doesn’t stop bleeding.

Then it gets easier, for a while, you partner with ignorance to get by.

You are going on just fine,

even as your heart is bleeding from the inside out,

and you are fine for days, weeks, months.

You carry the grief as a part of your body, while not acknowledging what it is actually doing to you.

Then it hits you. You are doing the most mundane thing and you wish they were there with you.

You feel robbed and stabbed

all over again.

Your chest is heaving for air, lungs constricting, collapsing, you haven’t breathed a full breath since they’ve been gone.

No matter how many times this happens you still have plenty more tears to dry you out.

Then you are exhausted and you don’t let yourself feel, because it is too much.

It is so much.

But you don’t face it every day. You don’t face it at all. Not until it hits you like a train.