The cells in your body respond with their own insistence:

A sore throat.

An ache to hug him.

A wall between you and the next thing you must do.

Desperation for oblivious, dreamless sleep.

Desperation for dreams.

Desperation for ghosts, actual ghosts.

Your face melting.

Your blood gaining weight, liquid lead in your veins.

Agitation.

Exhaustion.

Numb.

Power. (What more can hurt you now?)

An urge so deep that you feel the childish certainty that, if you will it hard enough, it might happen, to return to last month and make a different decision.

To write, constantly write, every feeling, every maudlin thought until they have bled dry, until they have transformed into something new. To toss the words into the world like a thousand cranes for someone else to know that this happened, this grief, this candle, this beacon, this monument to a life.