I awake in the guest room that used to be my room my parents' house. I'm lying in a twin bed, in a room that is smells familiar and looks comfortable, yet my parents have filled it with things that aren't mine. My dad has turned it into a makeshift lighting studio for his photography projects. A large, black lighting umbrella hangs over me, like it might swallow me whole while I sleep. The closet has only one old coat of mine hanging on the bar. I'm surprised I've managed to sleep in until now, only waking up once during the night.
My first thought is of him. How warm his body felt next to mine, and how waking up next to him felt like Christmas morning, every morning. How every morning he'd ask me how I slept. How his morning yawning made the skin around his eyes wrinkle into tiny crow's feet, and how I had once imagined how I'd be able to watch those wrinkles grow more pronounced as he aged. My heart hangs heavy in my chest as I inexplicably reach out for him, for the ghost of what I remember him to be, to hold me and erase this horrible feeling.
He was going to come to my apartment last night. I was going to make the homemade tomato sauce he liked so much, something he had never made for himself before, with his favorite chicken sausage, which is still sitting unopened in my fridge at home. We were making plans, for tomorrow, for Thanksgiving, for New Year's Eve, and for our future together. I remember all his little words, about how he wasn't going anywhere and how he wanted to love me forever.
I'm afraid to go back to my apartment. It's littered with him, both with his physical things and the memories of every moment we've shared there. But I miss my own space, filled with photos and my little comforts that are uniquely mine.
I've woken up up every day for the past five and a half months, since the day after I met him, with his face etched on my brain. Perhaps I lost myself so much in him that I can no longer remember what it's like to be lost in my own thoughts.
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