All these broken places

I understand so many things now that I never could've pre-ruin. I know why people are compelled to visit their lover's graves and to linger there for hours. I know how grief sits at the very top of ones heart, perched there always and ready to come forward at any time, even if you accidentally breathe just a little too hard. And I understand that odd phenomenon where people cover their mouth with their hand when something extraordinary or terrible happens because that's what I did for hours in those first hours after your accident, little sweetheart. That's exactly what I did when I was still so much in shock that the tears, that have never ceased to this day, had not yet fallen. All I could do was involuntarily clasp my useless hand over my mouth, trying, I think, to keep my soul from flying away, fleeing my body and spiriting itself into the undiscoverable place mortals may not yet know. I cupped my hand over my mouth in those hours, my love, I only now understand, as a kind of animal instinct to keep my soul within my being. But even so, I think a not insignificant part of me did indeed leave my shell and it, along with a large and jagged piece of my life, my youth, the man I was, fell and was broken to bits, left there on the cold tile hallways outside the ICU of that hospital, never to be recovered. Never, ever to recover in this life. Only the next. In the next, my little sweetheart. In that place, my darling, come for me and carefully peel my trembling hands from my mouth to let my spirit soar, untethered and unafraid to you.