The Table for One

Dear Delyara, We had a plan for the next fifty years. We had names for children who will never exist and a map of a world we’ll never see together. Now, my future is just a wide, terrifying blank space. I see you in every street corner, every song, every smell of rain. It’s a haunting that never ends. I came to Delyara to perform an exorcism. I wrote about the way you looked when you lied and the way you made me feel small so you could feel big. I am letting go of the version of you I loved, because that person doesn't exist anymore. I am leaving the "us" that died at this desk. Tomorrow, I will wake up and make coffee for one, and for the first time, it won't taste like grief. It will taste like a beginning.