There will be in your life an absence so big you will not believe it. You will say Show me the body, and they will not show you the body. You will wear the only black clothes you own and they will collect what you forgot drifts daily around you: motes of pale dust, the day’s heat, a strand of her hair. You will not touch the mug left on the side table, ruby seal of her lips’ whorls and creases, the wet ring beneath it a zero, a gaping mouth. You will go to the grave and it will be an ordinary hole, it will terrify you. You will not sleep, or you will sleep beyond waking so it resembles a minor death. You will forget it is Tuesday, Wednesday, and one day walking from one room to another, you will realize a week has passed since last her breath shook loose. This will destroy you in that it has not destroyed you. You will inflict small injuries on yourself and survive them. You will find tiny stalactites of salt clung to your lashes and her handwriting on the backs of bank statements. You will receive white chrysanthemums and platters of lasagna. You will receive guests and you will not speak of the dead, you will act as if this were a surprise party and she has not yet arrived. You will keep her shoes because she will need them when she comes back from swimming in blue ether; you will wear her thick sweaters because you will always be cold. When someone asks you how long you plan to hold on to the loss of her, you will respond, Forever, meaning never, grief a rope slithering through your raw fingers. You will say you have stopped believing in God, but you will pray. You will say oh God, why God, God please to disrupt the silence which lingers. Time will fold over you its lean shadows and fresh light. The moon will swallow itself then emerge again slowly. You will one day wake and no longer remember her voice. You will recall her touch as something else: morning sun draped across your thighs, the cat’s tail brushed against you in passing. You will catch the smell of her, fleeting, on a subway, and you will continue on to your destination without weeping. Someone will tell you a joke and for the first time in months a laugh will unlatch from your throat. You will no longer feel betrayed by the joy or good fortune of others. You will regard again the flowers budding by the sidewalk and not resent them their burgeoning life. One day you will eat tomatoes like she taught you and you will teach this to someone else you will learn to love, juice dribbling down your chins. You will take the salt in your hand and shake it onto the fruit’s raw wound. Like this, you’ll say, raising the globe to your lips. Like this.

Reddit post with the caption "Oops! I was eating an extra strong Halls drop and breathed his way." Underneath is an image of a very startled cat.