The first step to recovery is... well, don't start.

So I guess she’s gone.

She’s just… gone.

Just like that.

Fucking gone.

As in missing, to be had no more, to be found but naught, goddamn motherfucking gone.

I keep diving into old dreams, tearing frantically at old sutures with old points, looking for her just like I used to.  Only now, no beautiful rush of red blood and memories.  Now I come up from each shallow dive coughing, I find nothing but nothing.  Like… air.  

So I tie up the past so it won’t get away and I poke and prod at it, again and again, here, there, everywhere, anywhere, searching for that old feeling, for one last go.  Nothing.  Air bubbles.  A drop or two of old blood maybe, not red like it used to be, more like a rusty brown.  Mostly, the stinging pain reminding me that she’s gone, and I missed her.

I missed... I missed... I missed her...

I missed her like a hole in the head.
 

For every action there is a reaction. For every high, there is a low.
 

And so it was with her.
 

There’s a chill I can’t shake.  The sickly sweat that lays on my skin the way I want to lay on hers only sends the cold deeper.  My body aches, still aches from the moment she was torn out of it. Ripped from my spine, she had to unwrap herself from each individual vertebrae, through each fingertip, uncurl herself from every tendon, loosen herself from every joint. She grabbed at my heart as she left me, squeezing it apart into all it’s separate chambers and ventricles and arteries, so I felt a dozen different pangs with every scattered, rhythm-less beat. She clutched wildly at my lungs, tearing holes into them, separating the fibers so every breath would be labored and...

...pointless.

 
I felt positively ill without her. I couldn’t eat, the idea of letting anything that wasn’t her that close to me turned my stomach. I tried once or twice, but my body rejected the introduction of anything un-Imogene so violently I haven’t tried again.
 

 She drained my heart and made a spade… there’s still traces of her in my veins…

It’s like she fled my bones to crawl through my skin.  My flesh itself wants to just finish expelling her but no whining or pulling, thrashing or pounding will make her stop.  No threats or cajoling. No distractions, no excuses, no escape, no relief.

Because… no Imogene.
 

Imogene was always beautiful, from every angle, at any distance, in spite of any veil or variable you could impose. But where she really shone was at night.  It was like the whole world was still out of reverence for her beauty. The moon knew better than to compete.  The stars hid. She shone from the inside out, illuminating everything just by existing. The day she left, the day I lost her, was daytime indeed.  The sun stood still, at its highest point in the sky. The garish light poured over me, exposing the hollowed circles, sallow skin, high-lighting the way my bones protruded. Showcasing me for what I am, a worthless, detoxing junkie.
 

I don’t know if I’m too weak to seek shelter or if it’s just because I don’t give a FUCK, but I’ve been laying here ever since. Letting the sun bleach what’s left of me, turning all the grotesque proof of her absence into a blaring warning to never, ever, under any circumstances let yourself need something.
 

Lifeless. Listless. And empty, empty, empty.
 

Whatever.  Fuck it.  I just don’t care.  I was pathetic before I had her.  There’s no reason I shouldn’t be pathetic now.