These wooden slats are chipped, paint flecks drop with every uncomfortable shuffle, creaks come from knee and bench alike, followed by the sweet warbles of birdsong above.
This was our spot, this our earthly heaven, alas now purely mine, and I sigh, furrows forming frantically as I hunch forward a gnarled image of old humanity.
It has been three years of solitude, a thousand empty days, thousands of hours spent in our home and pieces are falling away from me.
Your memory in my memory are all that is left of you, all that I can point to as proof of a life so enriched and bountiful and I am scared.
I strive to remember, I force my mind to conjure your smile, your eyes, and a blank canvas stretches before me, dotted with muted patches of life.
My memory is self erasing, against my shattered will, my body has rebelled and I shall become more of a husk than I am without you.
I shall lose myself entirely, and this is nothing to knowing, that I shall lose you first, a second time.