The Way I Love(d) You

It is, was, the way a child loves a dog
Man's best friend but man
You're my best friend
And just like a child is clueless to the way a pet can suddenly disappear
It hit me like a boulder falling on top of an ant
And I swear to God I didn't get a chance to scurry to safety
One minute theres a sky and the next there's nothing
Nothing but life continuing around my breathless shell
The world keeps spinning and it's like it left me here and I still haven't caught up

In college I learned that eyewitness testimony is faulty
You're more likely to remember every detail of a weapon than you are the perpetrator
You're more likely to stick to your guns when you're not sure because that's how we're wired
But I don't even care about statistics because I remember
The day we met, swollen with a baby
Hobbling with my walker to meet this babyfaced man that claimed to be older than me
Showed me ID just to prove it to me
I remember you calling me sweetheart
Which you do to every girl but you are the only person to ever call me that
And I only want to hear it from your mouth or your texts or your snaps or your Messenger
I want to hear it in the wind in your voice with your smile and your laugh with your eyes and your hands
No one and nothing else

I remember when when you came to my room smiling like a fool
Because a newborn was waiting to greet you
And I barely knew you but you were there
I remember when I left and you didn't let go
Fiifty or so miles was nothing to you or me
I remember hitting on waitresses at Applebee's and daring you to get a number only to get rejected because she had a man but you said it was also because she thought you were dating me
I remember when I told you I was happy in love with someone else and you took it like a champ but you bought me flowers when he left and you stayed with me
And when He entered my home
Like a spy across a warzone
Only to tell me I was His and His alone
And made that recording on His phone
As He hurt me
When He left I called you
But you didn't answer
And when you found out what had happened you said why the fuck didn't you call me
I could have protected you
And of course we exhanged logs only to find some unknown reason why you never got my plea for help

There was a time when you wanted me to dance with you
And I told you I can't dance and you said I'll show you
I had this date planned and I can show you
Now I can't even remember which song it was

Four has always been my digit
You know that I'm a musician
So babe watch this, listen
Fourth grade, Suzuki Book Four, song four, four eyes, and four friends
Alea, Carlee, Brex, Morgan
And now four pets, four family members, four friends
You're my favorite though
You wanted four kids
And now I think four isn't as great as I thought it was because
Four years wasn't enough
You were gone four days later
And four letters into the alphabet lies you, D

Now it's 6 in the morning and I'm still up
Thinking of that fourth day
Hearing her screams
I hear them in my dreams man
I can replay that whole night in my head
From the moment she didn't make sense
I thought she was gone dude
I kept looking for some indication of you
Besides the cops and your car in the driveway and my unanswered calls
The silence like a black hole devouring all my hopes
Like it devours planets
I thought you were missing
God, I wish you had just been missing
So I stayed
And I stayed and called my husband and our friends
And I looked for anything else to say than he's dead
And I stood across the street until that bag was full of you
And then the eye of the storm was right over my head until the winds came back and the torrents soaked my coat and my hair and my eyes
And my lungs shrank in that moment when they took you away because I haven't taken a full breath since
And I swear they forgot how to expand when I stood there because my body wouldn't inhale, exhale
Instead it was no no no no PAUSE.
And what better way to hesitate the world's spinning than to stop breathing?

And I still can't sleep because I need to speak
I need to find the words to articulate this feeling
I need to breathe again

I have a big vocabulary and you know I love to be a grammar nazi but right now I don't know how I'm supposed to say it
Do I love you
Or did I love you?
Because we don't speak of those past in the present and love is a verb
But I can't justify saying past tense because I still love you even though you're not here
And I can't talk to your memory unless I talk to the freakishly feminine shirt you gave me from your high school days
Or the hoodie you gifted when I begged you for a piece of something so I could visibly claim you
And you told me to not mourn you long when you die
But it's been a few weeks and I still hate my heart for beating when yours isn't

Every time we love we give fractions of our hearts to another
I gave you such a large portion
And we all hope we can get it back when we inevitably breaks
But you took your share with you thank God
Because once it's back, it means the feelings are gone
Another ship passing by without a glance
But your photos are everywhere
And this pain, it's a relief because that means that you still have that part of me
And since it's in the afterlife now I'll never get it back
But I don't want it back because I want to keep loving you

I'll tell my daughter about her favorite uncle and my son about his
And I'll write until I find out how words on a computer screen will bring you to life again
The way science can bring one back from the edge
I've got pieces of you, too, though they may be small
They may be enough to fill some of the hole
I can mold myself around them like clay
And set them ablaze and watch them harden into a makeshift replica of what I'd hoped for us to be
And maybe, for now at least, that will be enough.