You missed him.

You hated the feeling that formed in the pit of your stomach every time you even thought of his name.

You hated it - him.

But you still missed him.

He had been the one person in your life that you could depend on for anything.

At four in the morning, when you woke up screaming, you called him.

And he was there.

When you had a great day, no matter why, you would go find him.

And he was there.

Whenever you had a falling out with your parents and were too angry to go home, you would sneak over to his house.

And he would always be there to open his door.

But one day, he disappeared.

You looked high and low, but there was no trace.

So you repeated you search again the next day.

And the next, and the next, and the next.

But there was nothing.

Until one week later, when you lucked out and his father answered the door.

You were so relieved you almost began to cry.

You did start crying when his father told you why he hadn't been around.

He was your everything in the purest sense of the word.

You hadn't been in love, but you had loved him.

And now he was gone, gone, gone.

Almost as if he were never there in the first place.

You took off running in the direction you thought was the right one.

A cross country star, you were not, but you made it there in record time anyway.

You stood there, staring in his direction, but unable to see him due to a patch of green and brown.

---

So you find yourself back here again three years later.

You had gone on to try to become a writer,

Poetry, short stories, novels,

It didn't matter.

Anything where you could put words on a page was good enough for you.

It was the only way you could talk to him anymore.

Because on that one Novemember night, three years ago, you lost him forever.

No one had been able to measure up since.

They could hear you, but they couldn't understand and that was so much more important.

Now, the only thing you could do was hope that he could hear you, wherever he is now.

Yeah, you would hope, but secretly, you knew.

He could always hear you, he always knew when you needed him.

Standing in front of his gravestone, you spoke out loud words you hadn't said in years.

Words between you and him that would be blasphemy if said to anyone else.

You sat down on the grass and leaned back against the stone imagining he was sitting next to you.

You smiled and nodded to yourself.

He could still hear you.

And you would keep talking.