kaz.

When I was younger, I did not understand this pain. It is not the pain that comes with blaring flame in your heart and hot coals scalping your brain; it comes with the feeling that you miss something between your collarbone and stomach. A heart. Nights will glisten with my tears, precious as pearls, pallid as I cry for a love I wish I had accepted. And I promise, I promise, I swear, I wish you happiness, now.

The following paragraphs are written for you, you must know who you are, because regret sets deep in my body—carving the last sentence you said to me. It sinks, and it is drowning. I can only imagine that you wish me happiness, too.

I do remember you. I feel like it needs to be said, for if you think you never once occupied my mind. That first sentence is a reassurance that; yes, you did. You do. You sit on the back of my mind like a petulant child demanding candies, like a stubborn stain on the corner of my carpet, like a broken up lover waiting for a closure. Somewhere along the way, I start chanting your name every time midnight strikes. Inej, Inej, Inej. My voice wavers, and your name is a prayer sent to beg the sea to bring you back to me. (Impossible. You would have refused, anyway.)

"She haunts me," I say. It is a joke. But no one laughs, they merely stare at me as if I have lost my mind, as if being and thriving in such a cruel world has hardened me so badly I broke. I think of the way I say it and realization hits me. Oh, you do haunt me. You haunt me in the way I walk to the harbor every foggy morning—tricking my own mind that you follow my steps there, in the way my gaze lingers in the flower shop you frequent to, in the way I begin nodding to the statues of the Saints—even when I don't have any faith left. You haunt me, you haunt me by your name only, Inej Ghafa. Your spirit stays between my collarbone and stomach, erupting blood that colors my everything gray.

"I think you love her, Boss," Jesper then says.

"What folly," I counter. 

What folly indeed. You are only a meter away when this conversation takes place. My hand grips the champagne glass tighter, clogging it down in one take. My throat burns, it is a reminder of the truth I try so hard to sail away from. And my eyes flicker in apprehension because this place is damn hell, still, love comes in the form of your name on the top of letters I can not ever send. It is unfinished, smudged because I stopped to think for far too long that the ink dripped.

I wish to tell you things. Like how the word 'love' and 'Inej Ghafa' in one sentence sounds so sickeningly sweet; as if I'm back to stealing ice cream with my brother until my teeth rot. I feel like a madman. People see me as a madman. This is what you have left me with: more greed to feel the excruciating hole between my collarbone and stomach, and prayers sent from the ashes of unsent letters.[]