I don't want to forget you.
God, I can't.
So I've started writing everything down. The way you said my name when you were annoyed. The way you dragged out vowels when you were tired. The way your laughter tilted at the end, like you were surprised it even came out. I keep scribbling them into notebooks, margins, receipts, anything within reach. As if by writing them fast enough, loud enough, I can trap you here before the details slip away.
Some nights, I replay our last conversations over and over until my throat burns from whispering them. I mouth your replies, your pauses, your sighs. I'm terrified that if I stop rehearsing, the silence will swallow them whole and I'll be left with nothing but a blur.
It feels like I'm fighting time itself— grabbing at pieces of you while the tide keeps pulling harder. I tell myself, not yet, not her, not this.
And yet… in the quiet between sentences, I hear the edges fraying.
Your voice in my head is starting to glitch, like a bad recording. Sometimes it's sharper than I remember, sometimes softer. I can't tell if it's you anymore or just me pretending. The thought makes me sick.
So I force it. I loop your voice in my mind until I'm dizzy. I repeat it in the shower, when I'm walking, when I'm half-asleep. I whisper it until my tongue goes dry, until I can almost convince myself that you're still here. Almost.
But the truth is, memory doesn't care what I want. It slips anyway. And the harder I grip, the faster it goes.
I tried listening to the songs you sent me once, the ones that used to feel like little bridges between us. I thought maybe the chords would bring you back in focus, sharpen you again. But all it did was hollow me out. Because I remembered how you'd hum along, how you'd joke about the lyrics being too dramatic for us— and now, all I hear is buzz where your voice should be.
Pictures don't help either. I look at them until your face stops looking like a person and starts looking like colors and pixels. My brain numbs out, refusing to give me what I want. It's cruel, the way absence multiplies in the places you go searching for presence.
So I've started inventing. Filling in gaps with guesses. If I don't remember the exact sound of your laugh, I'll make one up that feels close. If I can't recall what you'd say, I'll write a reply anyway. I tell myself it's better than silence, better than losing you altogether.
But deep down, I know what I'm doing.
I'm building a stranger out of fragments.
A version of you that isn't real, but still mine.
Maybe that's what grief really is — not holding on, not letting go, but slowly reshaping the person you lost into someone who can still survive in your head. A ghost, stitched from scraps of memory and imagination.
And I hate it.
I hate that I can't tell what's real anymore.
Was your laugh really that sharp? Did you really say my name that softly, or am I softening it now because I want to believe you cared? Every detail I cling to feels suspect, as if time is smudging the lines on purpose, daring me to fill them in wrong.
Sometimes I want to scream just to cut through the blur. Just to demand that the world give you back to me as you were, not as this half-remembered blur I'm left piecing together.
But the world doesn't answer. It just spins on.
And I'm left here with my frantic reminders. My notebooks filling with scraps. My hands clutching at air, over and over, like maybe this time it'll be solid.
The other night, I caught myself speaking to you out loud, not just in thought. My voice sounded strange, like it belonged to someone else. I told you something stupid I read earlier— about how statistically, the person you think of before sleep is either the one you love or the one you fear losing the most. Then I laughed, bitterly, because for me, it's both.
There was no answer, of course. Just the sound of my own breathing, ragged and uneven.
But the silence felt heavier than usual, like it was pressing back, daring me to keep talking. So I did. I told you everything I could think of—the weather, my meals, the way my chest still tightens when I pass the places we used to go. I told you I was scared. That I didn't know how to hold on without breaking myself in the process.
When I finally stopped, the room was so still it made me dizzy. It was like talking into a cave and waiting for the echo that never comes.
I think that's when I realized something.
I'm not just trying to remember you.
I'm trying to keep you alive.
Not in the way people talk about "keeping someone's memory alive." No, I mean literally— like if I keep rehearsing, keep repeating, keep forcing your voice into the air, it'll stitch itself into reality again. Like saying it enough times will undo the silence you left me in.
It's desperate. I know that. Borderline insane. But what else am I supposed to do? Let you fade into nothing? Pretend like I'm okay while every day strips another piece of you from me?
I can't.
Because if your voice disappears, if your laugh dulls, if the details rot away— I don't just lose you. I lose myself too.
So I'll keep doing this. I'll keep writing your phrases on scraps of paper. I'll keep whispering your name in the dark. I'll keep forcing my mind to replay the way you used to pause before replying, even if I'm making it up now.
Maybe I'm building a stranger out of you.
Maybe I'm just keeping myself company with ghosts.
Maybe I've already crossed the line between remembering and inventing.
But I don't care.
Because the alternative is silence.
And silence feels like death.
And I'm not ready to bury you yet.