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things unsaid
july 14 2022: forgive. break.July 14th, 2022Rachel,There are no words to describe how heartbroken and mentally hurt I feel from this week. And itās my fault that it came this way.Iām breaking up. We need to break up. This is causing both of us a lot of stress.I was hoping to talk about this the next chance I get but all my chances are gone. You are entitled to an adult, civil conversation about this; I do not think that is possible with the current state of my household and abilities.This week has been one of the worst weeks anyone could experience. And I wouldnāt wish it on anyone. I thought I had the strength to make it through unscathed... I was wrong.There are no words or amount of forgiveness I can ask from you for all the hurt and pain Iāve made/make you feel. You deserve better. You deserve the world, and all the kindness and love and pride it has to offer. With the current present, I canāt do that. And I donāt know when Iāll be able to.What does this mean? What does that entail?
- We need time to step back from each other, and need time to heal.
- We need time to think, and need time to take it all in.
- Disconnecting from you and disconnecting from our friends is what is expected of me,with the last shred of trust my parents can give. And it's my fault that trust is lost.
- Please donāt visit me at work, mainly for your sake. My parents have been checking in onme there too, virtually and in-person.- Please donāt call or text me or use messenger on my mobile phone. I wonāt have physical access to my phone as much as Iād like. And it still gets checkedAs ironic or hypocritical as it sounds, I still hold faith and belief in us, as Katya and Rachel. Our future(s) are extremely uncertain... I donāt even know what weāll go through tomorrow.I have had to come to terms with my parents and this letter. Iāve written. Iāve lost, in a way. Thisis my proposed compromise for the situation(s) we are in.This isnāt going to be easy. You, I, we canāt pretend like everything is normal. Iām sorry everything turned out this way. I did not want for this letter or these words to exist. You are so special to me, to our friends, and to the world.Katya
july 15 2022: a greek tragedyKatya,I catalogued all the many firsts you gave me, and in your absence, I flip through them quietly: my first Valentine, losing my virginity, my first Pride parade. So on, and on, and on. I don't think I ever thought this list would include 'first non-self-induced breakup,' but now it does. I stare at it like I could burn through it, like it's not real, like it didn't happen. 'First sleepover' was supposed to be there, and next to it 'first roadtrip, and next to that 'first apartment.' And a hopeful/sadistic part of me still believes that they will be - that there are firsts you have yet to show me. But then, the reality of our relationship hits me. And lie down and begin to cry.The funny(?) part was that hours before I received your letter, I had been drafting you a note as well. It was an expansion of the thoughts I first had in April. We were/are at different places in our lives and we should take a break (a few weeks, maybe) to reset. I was full of hesitancy to ask for a break. Back in April, you said you didn't want one. And this last week felt like poor timing. Now, I beat myself up with the knowledge that I didn't impose one when I should have. Maybe it would have granted me more patience. Maybe it would have eased the pressure I placed on you to come out. Maybe it would've ended in a breakup, one that was mutual and dignified. In these 'maybes,' I am devoured by regret and remorse.I make mention of this because your letter reflects all the guilt that I, too, feel. Guilt for placing the other in hurt's way. It pains me that we feel so. How terrible, to view our relationship (and the way it ended) through such heavy guilt. The kind of guilt that eclipses the devotion, the compassion, the dedication, the joy, the care, and the love that guided our actions. The kind of guilt that places the blame on us when things were out of our control. The kind of guilt that sours what little is salvageable: our memories of each other. And I don't want that for us. I don't want it. I don't want it.This is all beginning to feel like a Greek tragedy. I am Eurydice, meeting Orpheus' eyes mere steps from escaping hell. I am Daedalus, watching Icarus fall from the sky to the sea. I am Achilles, awaiting my Patroclus' return from the war. I have reached the point between grief and love where they look and feel the same.Even through this unsurmountable pain, I am grateful for sharing such a beautiful connection with a beautiful person. It floods me. Your love feels like home. It is warm and kind and good. You are my favourite person. This relationship is powerful, meaningful, and worthwhile. I could go on. And I would - I am desperate to give you more, to give you everything. But during a call I had with my mom, she asked, "Don't you think Katya already knows how you feel?" And I responded, "Yes."Of course I am (and will be, for a long time) angry, depressed, and hurt. But I also understand why you are breaking up with me. I forgive you.It is scary not knowing when we will connect again. But I await the day when we can share a meal and catch each other up on our busy lives. I will you show a silly meme of two creatures huddled together, and with lightness and confidence, you will say it looks just like us.With love,
Rachel
šš
july 31 2022: happy birthdayitās your birthday today. youāre turning twenty-two.your birthday was always a soft deadline of sorts. it comes two weeks before mine, a gentle reminder of my own aging. like spring after winter, like the sun and the moon, like all the forces of nature that we saw ourselves reflected in: i follow you.iām tempted to torture myself by fantasizing about how i would have celebrated your birthday if we were still together. i think we would have had to wait a few days, until after my term and your familial celebrations. you would give a nondescript excuse to leave the house, and you would pick me up from my house to go to brunch. i would dress up for you, pay for your meal, and dote on you a little more than i usually did. we would have come back to my house, where i would have given you your birthday gifts: a pair of wood carved earrings and a small, clay statue of an otter. even before the gift wrap fell away, a small smile would bloom on your face. even now, my heart beats for that smile.what should i do now? i was thinking of buying some cake and lighting you a candle. hands clasped and eyes shut, wax would melt and cool on the icing as i stall. i wouldnāt know what to wish for; there is too much i want. i simmer down from the āoutlandishā wishes that bubble beneath my ribs (seeing you soon, receiving a hug from you, anything to kickstart our long journey towards recovering from this devastation). i settle on wishing you good health and happiness - but even that, i doubt will come true.if it was not clear, i am miserable. i cannot approach your birthday in any way that would not make me upset. yet, i canāt find it in me to stop myself. for the past few years, your birthday has struck me with gratitude for your existence. it continues to do so, even if that gratitude is complicated. iām reminded that i deeply cherish life. iām reminded that time passes. iām reminded that i always grow, even when i think i canāt or wonāt.iām reminded that i love you very, very much, katya. this is hard to do without you. happy birthday.
august 16 2022: hell on earthi wasn't able to save everything from our google drive folder before she began deleting. photos and videos (memories) gone, like that. and now she's asking me to remove her from my instagram as well. i can't even protest, out of fear that it will hurt her even more. im forced to take the lashing as it is. what torture. and to think that i was excited to have received a message from her, the first one since she broke up with me. this is fucking hell on earth.
september 14 2022: do you still watch tv shows with them on your couch?do you still watch tv shows with them on your couch?
do you still go on road trips to nearby towns?
do you still go on bread runs, picking up bubble tea for three on the way back?
what is it like to have dinner with them every night?
what is it like to sleep under their roof?
once, you said that you werenāt sure if you could survive without me
did you survive?
november 6 2022: katya, 1Katya,fuck you
november 14 2022: katya, 2Katya,FUCK YOU
december 26 2022: like a dogwhen we first split the only anger i was able to direct at you was the anger that you weren't letting me love you the way i knew i could, the way i knew i had toand now im leashed up like a dog, the grip in your unmoving hands. there is no reprieve. there is only thirst, there is only starvation, there is only suffocation. i can't even bite back: you've muzzled me, tooim a good person and i didnt deserve what happened to me. and yet, pitifully, theres an animal inside me that feels validated by all of this. that i deserved to be caught and put downhow inhumane.
april 27 2023: enoughit would have been enough to plan a garden together, the one in our miniscule front yard. to go to a garden center with a list of native plants that my dad helped to curate, picking the greenest shoots and plumpest flower buds. it would have been enough to waste an entire weekend tilling the land and deweeding, getting our knees dirty and complaining about our tired backs in the fair afternoon. we would have sipped homemade lemonade and picked at bread and grapes on our inherited patio furniture under the porch awning. we would have talked about our first impressions of our neighbours, dog watched, and waved at other queer couples as they passed. we would have contemplated what flags to hang up during pride month, what wind chimes would accent our front door. all of that, more or less, would have been enough.
july 30 2023: everything i've gotits been one year since i lost my best friend and lover. she didn't die, but i grieve as if she did. for i haven't seen, or spoken to, or heard from her for one year, and that kind of disappearance is deathlike.i wish i could simply appoint the reason why i lost her. and in some ways, i can. abusive parents. homophobia and discrimination. but none of it satisfies the complicated knot that tethers me to my grief. even a year out, i don't know how to make sense of what happened to us. i don't know how to be okay with it. i don't know how to move on from it. and while im getting better at living with my grief (living with something that is senseless, and disruptive, and all consuming), im sick with want of rest, peace, and justice.it felt violent and destructive, her leaving me. it wrecked my sense of self. i became keenly aware that even the most intimate parts of my life could be taken away from me, specifically due to my gender, my body, my sexuality. that what we had (a consensual and deeply loving relationship and companionship between adults) was not sacred. even thought it felt like it was (holy and reverent), it was immoral to her parents. and so it had to come to an end.i often feel like the termination of our relationship was like putting down a dog, which is darkly funny because she was very much a dog person (oh, Ben, how i miss you even though you didn't like me all too much). there was something very inhumane about it. no invitation to meet, no phone call. she did it via email which i also find darkly funny. funny because they warn you about break ups over text, but wait until you hear about break ups over pdf! and dark because now i can't remember the last time we talked face to
face. of course there are things i haven't forgotten: her hugs, her coffee orders, her soft hair, her backpack by my front door, her hands and how they held mine. but it is odd having someone cut out of your life a year ago: there was so much i lost near- instantly, and so much i am still losing.in the beginning after the end, i clung to the narrative that she did what she did out of love. i likened us to a greek tragedy, where our eternal bad ending was not so bad because we had been given the opportunity to love so powerfully. that, maybe, i could learn to make the seven years of being in each other's lives satisfy me forever. better to have loved and lost
than never love at all, and whatever.i do not feel that way anymore. i recognize, of course, the immense conflict she faced in being a daughter to her parents and a partner to myself. i recognize there were unimaginable limits to her agency and power. at one point, i forgave her for how she treated me, dropped me like a hot potato, because of her circumstances. i no longer freely give that forgiveness.one year out. and while it has in some ways passed before my eyes, it has also been a brutally slow stretch of time. an unforgiving amount of time to become well acquainted with the miserable thoughts and the hopeful thoughts and the delusional thoughts and the new thoughts, which can sound like this: despite what this experience suggests, i am deserving of joy and love.and this: there is so much i have yet to recieve from others.and this: i will always love you very much, Rachel Jung. which is something i've said to/heard from myself before but nonetheless gently surprise me (the strength of my own resistance), like the cracking/hatching of an egg.and still. i feel like shit, often. i feel like hot trash. i feel gutted and splayed and hung to cure in a salty basement, fossilizing this loss until it permeates my meat and bones (until it's all you can taste when you bite into me). i cry frequently, and i've always been a crier so that says something. the tears probably make me even more salty.i marked the one week, one month, two month, six month, and (now) one year passing of my devestating unfair cruel breakup because it created a before and after in my life. i think part of me doubted that there would be an after; it was almost unreal the way my life incessantly continued without her. i have told very few about the one year passing. part of me
feels embarrassed that its so important to me. another part of me really wants to avoid the pity i get when i bring her up to others. a small part of me is holding its breath, unsure of what it is im supposed to feel. anger? catharsis? more grief? i feel these all.i wonder what next year will bring me, and the year after that. i wonder when july 14 will lose its significance. i don't know how to end this - literally (ending this journal(?) entry) and broadly (grieving losing her). but, like always, i guess i come back to this:future Rachel... i hope you're doing well. i love you and im thinking of you. im doing everything i can for ourself; im giving everything ive got.
august 9 2023: (no subject)Rachel J <[email protected]> to Kat Ko <[email protected]>
9 Aug 2023, 12:55the depth of my grief,
the heat of my anger,
the strength of my perseverance,
are all too big to translate into wordsyou have not made me feel worthy of a response
still, i await your apology to my face
for the dignity you strip from me
for the lack of care you treat me with
and for the way you left me and my friends
september 22 2023: where did you even go?like, seriously, where did you even go? im sometimes astonished that it was that easy for you to disappear. well, maybe everywhere but linkedin (yes, you forgot to block me on linkedin. god knows going on there is a different kind of torture for me). where did you go? whoās life are you living? what are you doing? who are you talking to? do you have friends? are you even in this city? where did you go; where was there for you to even go?
september 23 2023: "protect our children" / happy bi visibility daythinking about that time she told me she ached for her parents to see her as who she was: bisexualthinking about the last time i was invited over to her house - about a year into our three year relationship. how i knew then that it was not a space meant to hold me. thinking about how we ignored it. we ignored it so well. i thought, that when it came down to it, i knew which one of us she would choosethinking about the time she asked me to wait just a little longer, until she had more space to maneuver between me and her parents. i had been waiting since i was 18 - i was now 22 years old. thinking about the time she cut our video call short because her mom needed her for something. we hadn't called in weeks. after, she apologized and told me she would never hurt me again. i had to stop myself from pointing out the obvious: how could she promise that with the reality we were living in?that time of my life feels like a dream, in the way that nightmares are still dreams, soft and diffused and hard for me to grasp.
november 25 2023: all american rejectsngl being someone's dirty little secret is kind of sexy of me
february 5 2024: incongruentloving you feels incongruent with who i want to be
march 12 2024: for foreverI haven't been thinking about you in the same way that I usually do. tonight you came into my mind and I let you sail away, in and out, with a kind of peace I hope remains with me for a long, long time. for forever.
july 23 2024: my eulogy to youyou and i, in 19 moments:1. a few weeks before our first anniversary, we went skating at an open air rink near riverdale park. skating would come to be one of my favourite winter pastimes with you, although in retrospect, we went less than a handful of times over the course of our 3 year relationship. this second time was made memorable by the chill, the setting sun, the kids weaving between us. we went to the pi co at broadview and danforth; they burnt my first pizza and gave it to me for free, which i then gave to you to take home. the prince edward viaduct is not the most romantic place to be, what with the mass of passing cars from above and below. but when i think of the romance i shared with you, i think about you kissing me on that bridge above the highway at night.2. after our friends parted ways at ash bridges bay following another successful beach trip, and after we got dinner at the green eggplant, you and i loitered in a nearby park waiting for your dad to pick us up. we sat on a bench, dog watching, before lying on our backs in a grassy baseball field, the late afternoon blessing us with soft blue skies to look up at. i saw my love for you in the vastness of that open summer sky, something so pure and endless i felt i could fall up into it. i loved you so much i was missing you, even when you were right beside me, even then. this was the last beach trip you attended.3. on christmas morning, we sent present-opening-videos to one another. you were sat on the floor of your living room, ben at your feet, holding the silver bag i had gifted you a few days prior. you pulled out a small, cubed box; you guessed what was in it and you guessed correctly (a terryās chocolate, your favourite christmas chocolate). then, you pulled out the slender, heavier parcel. i remember you opened it backwards, the face of the cookbook facing me, before turning it over. i have memorized the look of surprise that crossed your face, the small āoā your mouth made, memorized because i watched this video over and over and over again in the days and weeks and months following christmas. āwhere did you even get this?ā you had asked aloud, in awe. i was never able to get over how happy you looked, and how i was behind that happiness.4. a triplet of stories; one, that a male coworker was being over friendly and you shut him down by telling him you had a boyfriend, completely seriously. two, that another coworker asked if you were single because another another coworker apparently liked you, and you were flustered in telling them no. three, that you bonded with an orientation leader over being queer and she asked you out for coffee, which you politely declined. i always laughed at these moments, never feeling insecure or possessive, but they left you feeling rattled and worried. i think you were protective of us.5. you liked coffee, and liked going on coffee runs before we hung out. this was not one of those times; i was studying with our friends at u of t and, ironically, you (the u of t student) had class and couldnāt join. but you told me you were planning on swinging by and asked if i wanted anything from second cup. half an hour later, you came with a latte and a muffin in hand. it was always a little strange, the soft boundary of āusā embedded within our friend group. we always made an effort to fulfil both our roles as friends (to our friends) and lovers (to each other). but in that moment, you treated me specially. you liked to dote on me when you could; your chivalry always made me weak.6. i place the conversation of you coming out to me in the west stairwell behind the music rooms of our highschool, although iām not sure it happened there (or if it even happened at all). what i will never forget, however, is the feeling of being trusted with your emerging bisexuality. to hold my friends and their queerness is one of the greatest honours of my life, and i repaid you by telling you about the pronouns and name i wanted to experiment with. few people ever knew me as "owen," ever saw me as a boy, but you did. you were my closest queer friend. i didn't have many, but i had you.7. my relationship with you taught me that i love to give gifts. they say that people who are enthusiasts are the easiest to give gifts to, and this was true. you were an enthusiast of so many things. you liked tumbled rocks and books, stuffed animals and art. as a part of my gift to you on one of our anniversaries, i presented you with a slice of cheesecake made by soft dough co., a single-woman-owned-and-operated small bakery in toronto. cheesecake was your favourite dessert, and when i found them through a friendās foodstagram, i knew i had to place an order. we sat on my bedroom floor, trading bites between sips of coffee. later that year, you bought an entire cheesecake from the same bakery for your dadās birthday.8. i stood on the muddy field outside convocation hall, valentines card in hand, scanning the flood of students for you. it was a thursday. after my morning class, i had made the arduous trip home to surprise you, studying your timetable to try and catch you after your lecture. you weren't appearing like i'd dreamt you would, so i texted you, attempting to gain your whereabouts discreetly but you caught on. turns out you had skipped your lecture and went to an exercise class instead. half an hour later, you met me at chester station, both of us sheepish. we got coffee at a nearby second cup and hung out for the better part of two hours. it felt very romantic. i asked you to be my valentine with a (hastily and hand made bts love yourself themed) card; you said yes.9. early in our relationship, most of my presents to you were digital, an artefact of us living in different cities. some of them included twitter layout graphics and tumblr meme roundups, but in true baby lesbian fashion, my first virtual gift to you was a spotify playlist. over the course of our relationship, it would come to amass 150 songs (115 pre-breakup, an additional 35 postpartum). i had named it āthe eleventh letter,ā a reference to your name which started with a k. āthe eleventh letterā was something that would come to haunt me; i was flipping through all of the love letters i wrote to you and realized that the last one i sent, the one you leave unanswered, was indeed number eleven.10. i came into our relationship with a lot of anxiety and trauma that made our early attempts at intimacy difficult and distressing. but over time, sex became a natural and healing and loving aspect of our relationship. iāve never had that kind of chemistry with someone before, never felt that sense of oneness; sex with you was near-spiritual. one of the things that felt ārightā about sex with you was the laughter, the silliness, the play and the exploration. i remember the time i made fun of you for having a mood music playlist on spotify, but i later found myself making one, too. we joked about having sex to it, until we actually did, and we werenāt joking about it so much then. it was hot! we always called it āfooling around,ā not because it was casual, but because there was always so much joy present.11. i developed a habit of visiting you at work, the u of t bookstore on college street. iād try to time it with your lunch break so as not to bother you. we would sit in the atrium with the second cup, eating lunch on the barstools, catching up. iād usually leave after your hour was up, but once or twice, i came to your wing of the store and loitered. iād sit on the plush chairs, reading whichever book cover caught my eye, as you reshelved books and tended to orders and did whatever it was that you did as a clerk. we would give each other knowing looks and smiles across the aisles. i loved you so much.12. only in retrospect am i able to understand the place you held in my life as one of scarcity. if i was lucky, i saw you three or four times a month. we always hung out in the afternoon (you never stayed for dinner). i always hosted (you never invited me over). i always came home on the weekends from waterloo (you never visited). i will never forget the time we distanced between march and may of 2020, the endless pandemic induced separation imposed by you. it came to an end haphazardly; on call, you casually told me it was cool to hangout again. i broke down. why was i so sad? wasnāt this good news? only in retrospect am i able to understand my own powerlessness in deciding when you were or weren't (are or aren't) in my life.13. in the winter term (my first winter term), i didn't have class on fridays, so i'd occasionally come home early for the weekend. i was laying in bed, sending you mildly flirty snapchats (we were doing that now - flirting). you complained that you couldn't come see me and i was happy to inform you that i was in toronto. you ditched your tutorial that afternoon to come over. this was the first time we had seen each other in-person since my confession a month ago, and it felt electric to be with you in the flesh. we made our way to my bedroom and we cuddled, although there was a kind of tension that kept me alert and aware of everything. the warmth, the softness, the closeness. we kept growing nearer and nearer and nearer until our cheeks were pressing. i gave some space, only to ask you if i could kiss you. with your eyes closed, you nodded. it was sincere and it was beautiful.14. we were at a winter market in december, right before christmas. it was a blindingly snowy day, but the east end warehouse we found ourselves in was blessedly warm. we loved going to markets, loved walking around the vendors and looking at their charming wares. that day, i got a t-shirt, a pin, and skincare. you, too, got skincare. we split a box of madeleines. one of our last buys were cups of coffee from nabulu coffee. as we waited, the barista said something akin to āyou two give off very compatible vibes.ā i don't think we were used to hearing that, hearing that we looked good together. we rode off the high of that compliment for the rest of the day.15. unlike yours, my parents were totally cool with our relationship. i came out to them two months after we started dating, at a chinese restaurant the day i came home from first year (fun fact it was also the day the bts persona album was released). iām not sure why they're so liberal - perhaps a mixture of them having queer friends, weak religious beliefs, and making a home in torontoās gay village. they donāt always get it right but they embrace me. they wish for very few things out of my relationship endeavours, but the conditions they do have are paramount: they want me to be happy and they want my partner to be kind. you made me very happy and i considered you very kind. i ache thinking about that.16. one of the final assignments in my observational life drawing class was to create a piece of art that responded to the word āruin.ā the approach most of my peers took was the archeological kind, of dilapidated buildings and structures, but i decided to paint you and i. in this painting, we are huddled beneath the covers of my bed; i am on the left and you are on the right. i am facing you, my eyes closed, a smile on my lips. you are facing me, your back turned to the audience. my blanket is strewn across the bed, part of it falling off. i rendered us in watercolours and ink; it is soft. this painting commemorated the early months of our relationship and the cautious transition we were making from friends to girlfriends. we kept saying that we would prioritise our friendship, that whatever happened we would still have that, but our promises felt incongruent with what was happening. that something, some idea or version of us, was breaking and becoming totally revolutionary. with abandon, i chased after this ruin. i welcomed it with open arms.17. we are having our first fight, which didnāt even register to me at the time that it was a fight. we are sitting in my living room and i am telling you that it is hard for you to give me the relationship i need. you are terse and passive aggressive and hurt; āi thought we wanted to try,ā or something like that. you were steadfast in your belief that we would work out, that all we needed was more time, that the relationship we wanted would come to fruition. and i was too, i really was, but we had just celebrated our third anniversary and you still hadnāt told your parents about us (about you). in this moment, i feel you slipping away and i am frozen by the real fear that we were going to split. i donāt remember what was said next, but i remembered how it ends; you are kissing me and i am crying into it and we make amends and then, like always, you leave my house.18. it was karinaās turn to give her powerpoint presentation and she punkād all of us by rating our drawers. i remember my drawer cluttered with hairbands, kulisaraās drawer with the batteries, and belleās abysmally empty drawer. i remember your drawer and its neatness, the way all of your socks were paired, rolled into tubes, and neatly lined in a box. i didnāt spend a lot of time there, but your space had a habit of being endearing in its tidiness. the paper crafts you hung up next to the posters; the glass cabinet you kept all of your special belongings inside of; the plant by the window; your bed always made.19. one of my favourite things about us was our evening ritual. we may not have regularly seen each other in-person, but i can count on one hand the number of evenings we did not bid one another goodnight. we liked to share about our days, no matter how boring or trite or repetitive. we talked about our new classmates, the work assignments we were struggling with, the new show we had started, the dogs we passed on the street. later on came the roleplaying, both erotic and soft, us imagining our lives as victorian era lovers or dog walkers or angels or adults with jobs and a car and a cottage. a recurring scenario was bed club, our made up organization dedicated to ensuring its participants had a goodnight sleep. āall who are in attendance for the bed clubās central toronto chapter weekly meeting, say āpresent,āā iād text, and youād text back āpresent.ā after all this, always, either you or i would narrate the exact path of kisses we were imparting on the other. from the forehead to the cheeks to the nose to the lips. it always ended with a kiss on the lips, and a goodnight, and our signature sign off; a blue heart and a crescent moon, a purple heart and a galaxy.i have carried these memories with me for a very long time, in hopes of recovering them, in hopes of preserving them, in hopes of honouring a version of you and i that was joyous and beautiful and profound. it is time for me to put them to bed. to ready itās stuffies and fluff itās pillows, to tuck it in tightly and to kiss it tenderly. though their impact on me is everlasting, they are not coming where i am going next; the boundless and freeing places i will call home as i move ever towards myself.i loved you, katya. threaded throughout all these moments, throughout three and a half years (and the four before then, too), is this sentiment. i will always be woven from it, even as it discolours and thins and frays. it is in the very stitches of the blanket i now cover you with, in the strands of hair i brush behind your ear. it is in each of these kisses i am giving you; one to your forehead, then cheek, then nose, then lips. i loved you. i miss you. thank you and goodnight.july 23 2024