The leaves crunch under your steps, as light as they are. The bitter wind breathes around you in harsh breaths, some biting up your sleeves and brushing past your cuts, still sensitive from two days ago.

Time doesn’t exist in this atmosphere as you amble past the rows of stones and dead grass and wilting trees. It could take you hours to reach your destination, but there are sporadic moments where you want to hurry but then you want to prolong the inevitable.

In the distance, you can still hear cars honking and sirens blaring. The sirens send shivers down your back and you shudder before dipping your head further behind your collar in hopes to be a little more guarded against the wind.

Your hands feel like blocks of ice clutching at flowers that have looked lifeless since you left the flower store thirty minutes ago. In your wallowing, you decided to walk instead of hailing a nice warm cab. Everything is cold.

Your heart is cold, your hands are freezing, the wind is biting, the whole Northern Hemisphere is cold.

Your earmuffs prevent Jack Frost from nipping at your ears and you glance up to see that you still have some way to go. You can see dead leaves fluttering past you and some landing in your hair.

The flowers on the ground look like they’ve been left weeks ago, some wet due to the frost from overnight melting. Your gloved numb hands squeeze harder around the flowers. You walk with the gait of a prisoner to his death, slow and reluctant.

Ten minutes later, you come to a stop in front of the gravestone. Your teeth bite your extremely chapped bottom lip as you fight back tears. He told you to be strong, so you must be strong for him.

But it’s all bull when you think back to those times. A sob breaks through your body as you shake once, your teeth gnawing even harder on your bleeding lip to hold back the tears. You promised that you wouldn’t cry.

You promised.

But some promises are meant to be broken.

A pitiful yell scratches your throat as your knees shake and tremble and buckle under your weight. Your body falls to the ground and collapses in front of his gravestone, the flowers tossed just a few inches to your right.

All the tears you’ve held back for the past month come breaking through your falling exterior, words and gibberish falling from your lips at the same rate of your tears.

Soon, the dead leaves carry small puddles of your salty tears in their lifeless bends and spill over when you place a hand to support your weight. You slowly position yourself in a criss-cross-applesauce and letting the same hand that had supported your weight let the fingers ghost over the epitaph imprinted on the stones.

It’s only a few lines, but it takes you minutes to finish your brushes. Your other hand grabs the dead flowers and place them neatly in front of the grave.

"Thing have been different," you whisper hoarsely into the wind. "I’ve missed you so much."

"I promised you I’d be strong, but I just can’t do it,” you croak, the sobs returning to wrack your figure.

You’re so caught up in your sorrow that you don’t hear the crunching of leaves coming towards you. Your eyes are still clenched shut and spilling tears endlessly. Suddenly, a warmth engulfs you and you take a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scent.

A pair of strong arms wrap around your shoulders from the back as his legs part to border your figure. Your hands lift and shake and hang on to the arms as your head leans back into the shoulder and sob into the crook of his neck.

You faintly register the feel of his lips on your hair, one hand plucking out the leaves from your hair as he breathes sweet nothings into your covered ear that effectively calm you.

"Look at you," he murmurs. "I leave for three weeks and this is what you do?" He places a chaste kiss on your quivering lips.

"Don’t worry, he’s in a better place. He wouldn’t want you like this," he reasons gently as he places soft kisses on your cheek. "Everything will be okay."

You tentatively nod into his neck.

Everything will be okay.

—-