Just a stroke of sunshine breaks through the blind, it wakes me up every morning at the same time.

Rolling over, my nose presses into the folds of the sheets and the pillow that sits on that side of the bed. I can still sometimes smell the fruit of her shampoo, and even the warmth that her body use to leave just before she rolled out of bed. When I close my eyes and take a deep breath, I can’t help but smile. Sometimes when I’m caught between the world of my dreams and and the realities of the real, I can still hear her in the shower.

Just the thought of her allows me to remember every curve and individual flaw, and if I allow myself I can recall the feeling of my fingers experiencing every inch of being. I remember what she looks like when she laughs, when she’s happy; When I had made her happy.

I’m standing in the middle of my room, haunted by the lack of decoration and personality this excuse of a home contains. What little there is on the wall tries to paint the life of a young man, but that isn’t who I am. There’s a picture of the us that she always liked, tacked up on my bedroom wall. It’s folded in half now, with you smiling back at me, and sometimes I pretend you’re still here … just out of sight. Somedays you’re there to blow me a kiss goodbye before I leave for work, and you’re always smiling when I get home.

I fall back onto the bed, and something summons a hint of your scent through the sheets and pillows, like it had been hidden within the fabric for all these years, holding out against the hundreds of washings. It’s not your perfume, but your natural scent; how the bathroom used to smell after you took a shower.

I try desperately to remember the last time I was graced with that smell. When I actually smelled it straight from your skin, or clothes, and I honestly cannot remember. It might have been the last time we laid in bed together, because after that it seemed like I never got close enough to catch it again.

This is my routine now, after you and everyone else has left me in my bed.

I curl up in that spot, hoping to extract the last dredges of this moment with you. I try to bring up every memory of us that I can, and wonder where I went wrong.

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