Grief is just unexpressed love with nowhere to go.

Crimson was a popular decorative color choice for homestyle restaurants tucked into the crannies of the midwest. Red everywhere. Walls, floors, tablecloths. The smell of coffee as soon as you hit the open door was imminent. Fresh pies sat under newly wiped glass counters, eyes devouring bites before the hands could touch utensils.

These are the scenes I remember; visceral. Real. Seemingly mundane, but as I age becoming the comfort I desperately seek in an increasingly maddening world. What I wouldn’t give to hear the clank of the coffee cups on the saucers, to have another bite of sweet, homemade, caramelized meringue. I don’t even like the color red, but in this case my memories are swaddled inside a sea of crimson, cradling the preciousness within. All I have left are the memories since you’ve been gone; and so it goes…

I love you. Now that it’s been three months, it’s not so raw - so exposed. It’s not everyday anymore that I think of you, but it’s still often. Every now and then, I see something that I think you would have adored, something I would’ve shared with you - and then it pierces me like it did in the last years of your life because you're no longer here. Part of you, in the end, was no longer here either. I have missed you desperately for so long. This love I have for you leaks like a sieve from my grieving body, spilling out with nowhere to go.

Tears flow that soak everything and eventually, they evaporate. Just disappear into the ether: and I don’t want them to go. Just like I didn’t want you to go. Misery loves company. Grief loves memory. Part of me is relieved the tears dry up, as it leads to optimism that maybe one day this flooding of emotion might dry up, too. Another part of me wishes to stay drowned in tears forever, so that I may never forget the love I have for you, and in turn, the love you had always bestowed unto me. I can’t forget. I don’t want to completely forget. But these aches, these tugs at my heartstrings I find unbearable. It’s stupid to cry over the smell of fresh coffee. Yet I find I’m crying over the scent of freshly ground coffee.

All I can say is that I am still here. Still weeping, still evaporating. Wishing I could go back in time, back to the restaurant of my youth with the crimson tablecloths and the clinking of your cup.