This Is How I’ll Keep You Alive In My Memory

Memories are delusory and nostalgia is a deception attempting to convince you that nothing you come across will be as special as everything you’ve left behind.

I wish memory was like a scent I could bottle. I would uncap the bottle and relive a moment exactly as it happened whenever melancholy overcame me and my heartache swallowed me whole.

It would not play tricks on my mind then. It would remain fragrant forever. It would never fade away.

It would do us justice.

I’ve heard how painful it is to mourn the loss of someone who is still alive. I won’t mourn you because I won’t allow you to be associated with pain like others before you. I’ll choose to remember you instead.

I’ll keep you alive in my memory because loving is so short and forgetting so long.

I will instinctively reach out my arm while sleeping to wrap it around you only to realize that I’m clutching at thin air. My heart will sink even in my deep slumber when the magnitude of my sorrow drowns it beneath turbulent waves of grief. My nightmares will transform from me falling off a cliff to us occupying the same room and yet avoiding each other. My feelings will wake me up in the middle of the night.

I will wake up in the morning and my mind will conjure up a lovely image of you before I’m even fully aware of my surroundings. I will find peace in this lucid image for a brief moment while it overtakes my senses like the warm and comforting glow of a fireside on a cold winter night.

I will remember you from the night I accepted that I was absolutely and irrevocably in love with you. I will remember you in all your breathtaking beauty. I will remember you in all your stunning splendor. I couldn’t take my eyes off you that night.

I will listen to a passionate song and the lyrics will remind me of you. All the love songs I grew up listening to and desiring to dedicate to someone will now be about you.

I will read a captivating book and flag the most memorable quotes in the hope that I will show them to you. I will come across a poignant piece of writing and want to share it with you to find out if it moved you just like it did me.

I will watch a majestic sunset and paint you in my mind with the hues of yellow and orange and the million unnamed shades in between. I will name my favorite shade after you.

I know I love you because you’re the first person that I want to tell everything good and bad as it happens in my life.

I will be unable to sleep at night because our memories will keep replaying in my mind like a broken record stuck in a loop. Each tiny moment we shared will be stored in a dusty corner of my mind ready to be savoured when the anguish of your absence is too much to bear. Each nook and corner of your pretty face will be illuminated while I recall the nuances of your reactions as you responded to my words.

Your smile will be lighting up my world. Your eyes will be telling a story only I could read. Your gaze will be piercing my soul.

I wasn’t thrilled about my existence before I met you but at least I wasn’t aware of the gaping hole in my soul made real by the void you have left in your wake.

It was difficult to live without knowing if I would ever meet someone who would ignite a fire inside me that refused to burn out. It’s impossible to live knowing that you have caused an inferno to be unleashed which is threatening to burn my entire existence to the ground and you’re not here to fan the flames.

The last thought on my mind before the tight embrace of sleep will be how I regret meeting you sometimes not because you’ve hurt me or because you’ve been a bad influence on me but because it was easier to live my life knowing someone like you didn’t exist.

Then I will wake up in the morning and do it all over again.