I always knew that it would be me with dirt on my hands. I’m standing inside of a grave, six feet deep staring at the mess that I have made. I wish that turning back time was an option, anything to avoid burying the hope that I had left.

My grieving has only begun for you and you haven’t even gone yet. I’ve stained my jeans, wondering if instead I should lay here. Dying with whatever possibility we had of being something.

I glance around, what flowers should I place around this grave? Lilies? Tulips? My yard is beginning to look like a cemetery with all of these tombstones laying around. How many times do I have to die and be born again in order to get it right? I can no longer tell if this grave was meant for me or you.

I toss the shovel up, climbing out of the ground, and take a look at my work.

It was art, the way people destroy things and here I was, creating a monument out of nothing.

I didn’t get a goodbye and it took more out of me than digging the grave because now I have to mourn something that hasn’t died. Now I have to bury another piece of me that I’ll never get back.

I cannot accept this fate; therefore, I am on my knees at the site of your burial. My hands are caked in mud and the rain falls steadily upon my back, I cannot decipher between my salty tears and the storm raging in and over my head.

Your name is being called out every passing second, my voice becomes strangled and shaky. There is no answer, no matter how many times I beg for your voice to be heard again.

Six feet is a long way to dig, the grave is filling up with water turning the packed in dirt to mud. I began to curse at the sky and curse at the world. I tried and now I am not sure when to quit trying. I wanted to know so much more and now I am afraid that I never will. You’ll go on carrying my secrets with you along your new adventures, I’ll live them through photographs and wonder whose secrets you are collecting now.

I am able to fling open your casket to your resting face. Immediately I am pressing on your chest just trying to revive what is left. I give you my breath, just to take your place.

I’ve done it again and I shouldn’t have. Tell me, if you were me, would you take a chance on someone? I did. I’ve grown attached, your dark demeanor drawing me in closer and clouding up my memories.

I have managed to create an entirely unrealistic world inside of my head, where we both occupy space. However, in the real light, mutual understanding of what we are isn’t clear.

You can only try so much, I can only try so much. Communication begins to thin, and I keep spreading it thinner like it’s going to help, one day, it’ll rip.

Then, bam. There is a hole and said hole will keep getting bigger and bigger because that’s how it starts. Yet, here I am I’m standing over the hole with a shovel in my hand attempting to throw new soil on top of the hole to make it better.

You asked me before if I’ve ever tried and I haven’t. I have never wanted to. It was pointless then, I even knew it. So, I didn’t. But now, now I am.

I’m lying in that hole, the one that keeps getting bigger no matter how much I fill it, and I can tell you that it is cold down here. Lonely, too. I now understand this, after all, is a grave. I cannot stop the inevitable, things like this die and we cannot revive them. We must bury them and find peace.

I’ll grieve. I’ll grieve every day, placing flowers on the grave until the grass has grown and taken over its space again. You, you don’t grieve. You’ll feel sad, but you won’t grieve. Grieving will seem minuscule in your world because you take on so much more than I.

The outcome remains the same, you could spot it from the beginning. My only advice to you: Dig your own damn grave.

 

It’s the eve of the funeral- the beginning of the end. The hole that you’ve been digging is six feet down and we’ve only got hours.

But I’m here, awaiting a sign- or lack of- patiently with flowers, to see when it is time to be at peace. Nothing but a smile will be on my face because I tried- I really did.

My heart beats out of my chest, remaining there on a time schedule because soon it will be silent, laid to rest for weeks until sunshine returns. My thoughts ramble on throwing my mind in circles.

I’ll hang onto every word, wishing for one more and never receiving it. The flowers are clutched between my hands.

The fault belongs to no one but me. Merely, I asked for it. I wished to feel anything at all, then you came along and made me feel everything.