Yesterday, I found a poem you wrote me while deleting random notes on my phone. You wrote the poem on September 30, 2024, a month before you died. I had not read it in a while and I started crying. Then I had to work and put away my feelings for everyone else.

Mornings
The sky blushes softly, the night fades away,
As dawn breaks the silence with whispers of day.
Golden hues scatter, the twilight’s unspun,
The world stirs in awe at the rise of the sun.

Birdsong floats on a breeze through the trees,
Carrying secrets found flitting o’er soft morning seas.
Each leaf seems to tremble with joy at the sight,
Light spilling forth, golden, pure, and bright.

There’s dew on the grass, tiny diamonds alight,
Each moment a wonder, each second delight.
In the stillness, the future reaches out with the sun
Every dawn a promise of a day with you begun.

Last night, while Alexi Murdoch sang to me about an orange sky, I remembered what it felt like to be absolutely enamored with you. The first chord strummed on the acoustic guitar, and I froze in place, closing my eyes to limit sensory input. I felt my breathing slow, and my stomach relax as joy filled my center, the feeling of warm chocolate chip cookies. I tried to hold my attention there, on the feeling of utter relief. My body is exhausted trying to hold me together, a rigid container bursting, a small aquarium for an orca. I tried to keep my attention on the sensation of buoyancy in the ocean. I felt like I feel in those moments of serenity when I finally notice I am drifting to sleep.

I managed to stay there for the first in your love before I started sobbing and hyperventilating. The impression of you so close to me feels like every shiver in every horror film. Am I cold or is this you? I touched the feeling of your warmth and was slapped by how far I have fallen from it. My body cannot hold both realities without panic. It is almost a year, and I still cannot hold the pain of your dying alongside how much I love you. Realizing I still cannot hold both caused me to panic and hyperventilate more. I stood up to splash water on my face and fill my water bottle. As I walked back to my bed, I realized this panic attack is because my whole body remembered what it feels like to lose you, that, if I could have felt it all, this is how I would have reacted to finding you on my floor. I split in two when you died and have not yet integrated the halves back together.  

Tonight, I was reading what I wrote above and realized that I was able to stay in the feeling of loving you for thirty seconds before panic took over. Given I could not feel how much I love you at all 363 days ago, thirty seconds feels like a big accomplishment. Shifts are happening after all.