"How are you? It's been a week and I have not heard from you. I hope to hear from you soon, are you eating enough and sleeping? I am ranting now, just um, well call me sometime. I'm worried. So yeah, call me!"

I look at my cell phone in heavy silence as the voicemail ends, how many times have they called me? Has it only been a week since the last phone call, strange, I thought more time had passed with how much each day has dragged on by slower than a snails pace. Sighing loudly, the only sound in my room, I rub at my tired eyes and try to find the motivation and strength to get off of my bed and crawl my way to the restroom to at least try to get a semblance of control back in my life. Though, did I really want to get control back? Even if I did there was no reason for me to believe that it would change anything, you would still be gone and I would still be here. Funny how I still have your last messages and texts saved, I cannot fathom deleting them, not the good ones nor the bad ones. I almost find it endearing the way we would fight and bicker, you always had a way with words while I would choke up trying to get my mouth to spill the words my brain was firing too quickly for me to process. I probably looked like a silly and stupid person to you, how I would be so red in the face grasping at straws because the conversation was moving too quickly for me to toss in my two cents. 

How very strange that I can think back to that and find it almost like a sweet memory despite knowing that the context should not be so romantic, it never was to begin with. Missing you has been cruel, rose-colored glasses can not compare to the way my lonesome mind is rearranging my memories and how my heart is forgetting everything to only see the good. I really am such a fool, aren't I? I think that you are still there, somewhere, huffing into your coffee while looking at your phone waiting for me to apologize first. I still think that you are smiling into your warm and steaming tea, delicate hands curled around the mug to keep warm, as you giggle and snort at something bemusing. How I miss that, how you would blush at that cute snort you used to hate so much, and how it never failed to make me chuckle in response and make me fall even more in love with you. How we would find our hands to grasp, laughing hearily, until you had to either put down the mug or let go of my hand to wipe your tears. I remember you used to let go of the mug first and always pick my hand to hold -- it used to make me so inexplicably happy each time you did. Was I that important to you that you picked me first without even realizing you did, such a small gesture that I wonder if you noticed at the time. I do not think you really took into account how I was so happy with the little things, I never cared about the big picture because you were my picture, each small snapshot and snippet that made my whole. Even the blurry and out of focus shots were dear to me, because no one is perfect all the time -- not you, not me.

Lost in memories of you I find it hard to breathe again, that ghost of you always lingering just out of reach and sight. I know I cannot go back to how things were, you are not going to walk through those doors and use your foot to kick the door closed while holding more bags than you should. Remember how you used to hate making multiple trips to bring everything into our home so you would struggle carrying everything at once and how you'd complain how heavy it was? Remember how I would try to not laugh at your antics and rub your shoulders saying you are a stubborn idiot, but at least you were my idiot and I cared for you? You are still a idiot -- at least to me you are -- and I still care for you, that has not changed. I miss kissing your cheek and helping put everything away while teasing you that the poor door did not deserve to be kicked all the time and your shoes would leave everlasting scruffs upon it's surface. I remember how we laughed heartily as we suggested giving the door 'armor' to protect it from you, maybe some foam or felt to cushion it against your habit of using your foot to open and close the darn thing. I still smile remembering that habit of yours, all because you were so stubborn and hard-headed which made things harder on yourself than need be.

Knowing full well that even if I reach out to you that I will only grasp air and more memories, I still cannot resist looking at your number on my phone and wonder how many times it will ring until I am sent to voicemail. The answer is ten, your phone will ring for ten times before the message prompt will kick in. I always get anxious whenever I find myself calling you, scared beyond reasonable explanation that even after the ten rings the message prompt will not come. I am scared what will happen if I get no message prompt at all, or a message that your voicemail is full. I am scared that there will be a time that I call you only to realize your number is no longer yours, some stranger picking up instead. I am so scared, so frightened, it is quite stupid really that something so small can make my heart race as if I am facing danger. You are not the danger, you never were, you being gone is the danger because I do not know how to face it. I know I will have to let you go, say goodbye and move on, I just am not strong enough for it. I don't WANT to say goodbye and go back to a routine without you in it, you have been etched into my everyday and there is no way to erase you from it. How can I even begin to find the threads that link to you to untangle each one so that I am free from you, do I even want to be untangled?

Biting my trembling lips, raising my hands to press firmly against my eyes to hold back the familiar and shameful burning of tears, I feel myself crack into smaller pieces of myself yet again. How many times can someone break and still have something left to shatter? How many times can you get fragments out of shards? I am still finding that out myself. A traitorous sob escaping me, stealing what little oxygen I could snatch despite the constant weight against my chest and burning itch at the back of my throat. Rolling over to my side, knees drawn up against my chest with arms hugging my chest to hold what is left of me together, I let myself mourn everything lost; both you and me.

Time continues to move forward though I am stuck within yesterday, within you, within us. Time will flow -- as it always does-- much like my tears and I cannot help but wonder if your time is frozen too and trapped within a endless rewind. Your scent and the memorry of your laughter will fade, the color of your eyes beneath the sunlight, the way your hand felt against me as well. One day I will wake up from this nightmare and will no longer feel you shake me to my very bones like thunder. One day your charms will be but a vague recollection that I would grasp at straws to gather into a whole. One day I will be struck by a thought of you and it will no longer steal my breath, nor will it stop my world. One day I will look around and notice colors, and take heed of myself moving in sync with time around me without realizing when exactly my time began to catch up with 'Today.' One day, maybe not today or tomorrow, you will become my permanent yesterday. Someday with a little more time you will be 'somebody' rather than 'everything.'