Charcuterie

I'm trying to remind myself to write more, that once upon a time I liked writing a lot.

I rarely get to write more than memos or emails now.

So I sit, slightly melancholy right now, somewhere between a woman who got the meat and cheese board and ate all the meat first and a father teaching his son how to use a drawing tablet.

Every time I write, the grief comes. It's angering really, when I am trying to write about something else but the words flowing from my fingertips keep expressing my sadness. I could be writing about the cat, or the glass of wine in front of me, but if it is not work, it slips out.

While no longer oppressive, it is still here. Haunting me, probably for the rest of my life. Grief is not a solitary emotion, it is a state of being, eternally with me and part of me.

I try to remember what it was like to write before. Sundays, like today, spent with a glass of wine, charcuterie and this same bookstore. Typing.

But what was there to express then? What was there to say before all I said was I miss you? I look over the past pieces and all of them, nothing says anything but I miss you

The past 5,000 things I wrote have been some permutation of I miss you.

The man across the bar, scrawling into his small notebook, what else could he be writing but that he misses you? My default, which used to be "is this all there is" is now "I miss you." My default emotion. My default words. My default world.

Nearly three years later, and that is it. That is all I have and that is all I am. Missing you.