𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐟𝐞𝐥𝐭 ˢᵏᶻ

.𖥔 ݁ ˖๋ ࣭ ⭑ streetlight

my precious minho,

our home feels empty ever since you left. your cats still crawl into my lap, demanding to know where their father has gone. every night, they claw at our bedroom door, drawing maps of how they could find you.

i have no answers for them. i have nothing.

was it painful? i hope not.

i hope you smelled the fresh rain on that spring afternoon, not the metallic blood that seeped from your broken body. i hope you heard the birds chirping their happy songs, not the cries of the student driver who was horrifically aware of her fatal mistake. i hope you felt the sun beating down on your skin one last time, not the desperation of the paramedics who tried to resuscitate you.

and i hope you thought of me, in those last seconds, and all of the lost time we'll never get again.

recently, i fear i may be losing you. only fragments remain, like the smell of you on your clothes or the photos of us that we spent hours hanging up in the rooms. on rare occasions, i sometimes here the front door open at the time you'd usually come from from work and the excitement in me swells.

i know it's not real. it's never real.

but yesterday, i failed to remember your voice. so i listened to the voicemail you sent once - a grocery list - until there wasn't a sound of yours that i couldn't recognise.

how sad is that?

last month, your mother paid me a visit. she expressed her concern for me, explaining that the best thing i could do for myself is move forwards from this. losing her son was difficult, she said, but watching the girl whom she considered her daughter lose herself was even harder.

she told me that if i didn't move out in two weeks time, then she'd kick me out herself.

i always did forget that it was under her name.

anyways, apparently i should've stopped moping around many months ago and got my life back on track.

unfortunately, i believe she's right.

would you feel betrayed if i left? started afresh?

maybe it's exactly what i need.

the house has been empty ever since you've been gone. the new tenants move in on thursday, or so i hear. a newly married couple - the irony of it stings me even now.

the cats tolerate my affection towards them, but i know you'll always be the favourite.

the streetlight outside flickers sometimes, tracing your silhouette across the sidewalk.

in those moments, you are eternal.

goodbye, lee minho. our love was too great for this world.

perhaps we can meet again, in some other dimension, where life is kinder to us and time is on our side.

until then,

✰