As she presses her head against her pillow, she feels his fingers on her skin. She remembers how electrifying his touch was. How invigorating. She thinks about last year, the year before. She feels the darkness start to suffocate her, and suddenly, the strength she somehow mustered up begins to crumble. She doesn’t want to cry because she doesn’t think she can stop if she does. She wishes she could just have ten minutes with him, that’s all she needs. Just one more hug, one more kiss. Just to hear his laugh, to feel his heart beating, to smell his scent. She’s scared of being alone, because loneliness is the hardest of all feelings. She tries to talk to him, hoping that he’ll respond, but he never does. Of course he doesn’t. The dead can’t speak. She wants more than anything for a sign that he’s still with her. People keep saying that he is, and she tries to believe it, but she can’t. If he were here, wouldn’t he show her? Somehow? She worries that he doesn’t know how she feels about him, how she’s always felt, and how she will always feel. She closes her eyes, in hopes that she’ll see him, but there’s nothing. Her breathing gets heavier, slower, deeper, as she tries to convince herself that everything will be okay. She squeezes her eyes so tight that the stars behind her eyelids start to dance. It’s so beautiful. Then, she begins to wonder if that’s what he sees. If he’s dancing among the stars. If when he closes his eyes, he sees her. Slowly, her thoughts quiet down and she falls into a state of oblivion, a state of ample peace. She falls asleep, and the darkness that swallowed her up spits her back out. It reminds her, in her dreams, that she should wake up the next morning. That there’s a world out there worth discovering, a world she can discover for the both of them. So she wakes up, and she’s not sad anymore. At least not at that moment, and that’s good enough for her.