Virtual reality?
The time that we got together was digital. It was 2021. We met through a book club and shared digital books — a love story over telegram and emojis and stickers. I remember you today through songs on my Spotify. I should have kept a shirt at least, before you faded away. I have your belt, though, I avoid it like the plague. It must be the grief sticking to it that puts me off. I always avoided pain. I deleted the telegram conversations, I did not keep your perfume. I wish I was not so eager to tear apart grief away from my body. I know it is hard to feel things, but I should have remembered that I would want to feel one day when the dust settled. Well, it might be settling now.
Get BewitchedForceofthePyres’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
All I have left is an Instagram account, painful virtual evidence. Does evidence count if it is virtual? Yes, I am almost sure it does. You were successful in not letting me get away with the let’s numb it out strategy. Because you have cured me of one horrible habit, that of avoiding pain. I feel the pain of your loss, in my body, in my chest. I guess the body is as real as it gets. I remember you like the nostalgia of the 80s and 90s, like a ray of sunshine over my father’s profile, but also as real as a ghost energy sticking to my body. Love is funny and contradictory like that. Love is life before life was experienced.
