I had been dead only an hour when you showed.

You are even late to my death.

You cried, I wailed.

I’d give my after life just to tell you to be ok.

I’d kill the sun and moon just for your pain to stop.

Your tears fall on my lifeless skin and my whole soul aches.

I have only been dead an hour and have already killed a part of you.

The nurses come in to comfort you they try anything to get you to breathe.

But you won’t breathe because I have taken your breath with me.

While I was living you filled me and I filled you.

Our lungs one, our hearts beating the same rhythmic song.

The song of our life. The lyrics told of our love and laughter. The bass told of our anger and disparity. The violin murmured our sadness.

But I have left and the song plays no more.

I wanted you to know that you can live without me. You can make a new song with others.

And every once in a while when you remember the indispensable person I was and the song we wrote, I will play it with you again untill we both fall down the rabbit hole of remembrance.

I wrote this a while ago when I was first trying to express how deeply my loved ones affect me. I am the dead person telling the story of a love.

The First Hour was originally published in Scuzzbucket on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It was dark outside. The breeze and the rain were in a harmonious frequency that was enough for me to lie down a little longer on my pillow. To be honest, it was a lazy beginning, yet I had to wake up for the early bus to my first day at work. In an unknown land yet known to my heart, I am starting my life in this beautiful, strange land ahead of time. It made me feel lonely sometimes, but massively calm and spontaneously adventurous. For an unknown reason, I embraced this strange land with all my heart. It is Sweden, a Nordic land with magnificent beauty. She welcomed me with quiet streets and cool rain, like a lady who does not speak much but means everything she says.

Anyway, this is not about her, of course. I was late for the bus and, to be sure, the buses run on time here, although I do not. So, thanks to my long legs, I finally reached the company. It was the most nervous and happiest day of my most nervous days. Yet I managed to catch up quickly, and now I am adapting. I have been working here for a few days. The strangest thing of all is that people talk less or smile so little that it made me feel so strange in such a strange place. They only talk when necessary, and it is very hard to get a smile on their faces. Since I am a person with a smile always on my face, sometimes I felt like a madman among the icy cold faces around me. So I became a smile hunter, searching every corridor for one.

But, to be precise, there was a special time between the work hours when all of our staff got together for a light chat and a good-smelling coffee. Not to mention the tasty cinnamon buns and many other sweet things on a plain white table. That time was very special to me, of course, because it was the real time that I began to know the people around me little by little. It was the time to know each other, including myself. It was there that this smile hunter finally found some smiles. Really, I got to know this new environment step by step, thanks to this special time that was only a few minutes but lasted for a happy talk and a relaxing coffee. I initially preferred to call it our coffee break.

But everyone was telling me a different name for this time. It was “Fika”. And that is when I learned the real Swedish tradition behind fika. It is really a time for a break, but also a time for a little chat and closeness. It is practiced daily, and they treat it with sincerity. I understood that a break is not just a break to sip a drink and have a bite, but a time for connection, so little yet valuable in a world where the distance between us people is growing farther and farther.

The Smile Hunter in Sweden was originally published in Scuzzbucket on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.