If I could hold you

I have been watching you for a while now. At first you were okay; you cried, but you called friends, your parents, sometimes even mine because they shared that loss. But slowly friends got sick of it, somehow expecting you to get over it, as though that were possible. Your parents had never understood, they thought I was just a flatmate, someone you lived with but didn't love - I won't go into their prejudice now, because really does it matter anymore? - and so they expected you to move on. "Maybe if you moved out, darling, you would feel better?" But all our memories are there, in that tiny flat where we began our lives and I understand; you just can't leave them yet.

But, sweetheart, one day you'll have to.

You sleep on my side of the bed now, head pushed into my pillow, but after three months there is no scent of me left, and really, darling, you should wash the sheets. And do the dishes. Clean that wine glass you've left on the bedside table like a macabre sculpture, my lipstick on the side, the closest thing to my lips you have left. The duvet cover really needs to go in the wash, we had others and you still do, even though I didn't pick them and they're not my favourite colour, purple.

Daylight would help. I know, I loved summer, and you loved it because I did. I know, now that spring is here you feel further away from me, from the ice that caused my car to skid, sliding, invisible hockey pitch on the road. But I want you to embrace it, the light; it really will make you feel better. Remember my smiles in the sun, not your years on my pillow.

If you could hear me, you would know I want you to be happy.

Sometimes I add my screams to yours, because your crying frustrates me. Before the accident, I would have curled you into my chest, your tears soaking my blouse, and my hands would have stroked your hair and calmed you. I long to feel the silken brown locks that adorn your head and frame your face, just as you long to be held by me again. Believe me, I miss you as much as you miss me.

My dearest love, my wife.

I wish you would get up, wake up, do something, anything. Clean the bathroom or dust in the lounge. Pack up my clothes instead of wearing them, because the only thing it's doing it causing us both pain, though you can't see mine. Get rid of that damned car. I know you think it a mockery, that it should have been so easily fixed up when my own body could not be, too broken to even bleed, to breathe. Now it stops you leaving the flat because it waits outside to mock you. Get rid of it.

How could we have known we didn't have longer? Would you have stopped me going out that day? I'm sorry, but you have to start living again, for the both of us.