Goodbye, My Lover

Three years, sixty eight days, and approximately ten hours. That was how long Zachary James Baker had been the most important part of my life. And now, he’s gone. There is nothing I could have done to prevent it. He’s gone, and I’m left standing here looking out at a colorful world through monochrome eyes.

Before meeting him, I was always the type of girl to plan everything. I lived my life in a series of compartmentalized motions. Everything had a time and place, and if everything wasn’t just precisely so, I couldn’t handle it. But that was before Zack. That was before I knew how colorful the world could be.

That was before I knew love.

So, it’s for me to understand why he isn’t here anymore. How could he just leave like that when he knows how much I need him? It doesn’t make sense to me. I know he loved me; that he still loves me. So why isn’t he still here? Why isn’t he still holding me, and touching me? Why isn’t he still telling me those soft, sweet words that always calmed me down?

Everything about him is imprinted in my mind. I can’t stop feeling his calloused, yet gentle, touch on my skin. His husky voice fills my head every minute of every day, and when I dream at night, he’s still laying beside me in our bed. He haunts my every thought, and everything I do is now centered around how he would react if he knew what I was doing.

Webster never came up with a word to describe quite what I’m not feeling. I’m not feeling pain, and I’m not feeling empty. I don’t feel like he abandoned me, and I don’t feel like he was hurtful to me. The only thing I can feel is love for him. Love doesn’t leave when one person decides it’s no longer there.

The last thing he gave me before leaving is lying in a crumpled ball on the pillow his head used to lay on. I’ve looked at that little scrap of paper so many times that I’ve got the three words on it memorized; the scribbly hand in which he wrote as tattooed into my mind as the colorful designs that adorned his body. Three simple words that break my heart every day. Three short words that mean so much. Three small words that tell me just how much he loved me.

Goodbye, my lover.