I love putting on headphones and listening to all the saved voicemails and scraps of voice memos of her. Anything and everything I have with her tinkling, bell-like voice on it.

I love when I cover my ears with all that pleasant and it's like both teeny tiny speakers projectile vomit her angel noises until they clash at some point in the middle of my head. Injectible memories, but with volume control and a pause option and a beveled tip that never gets dull.

I love getting lost in the sound of her.

I love feeling like she's there but my eyes are closed.

I love remembering her.

I love how it always leads to dreaming about her, which at present, is the best I can hope for.

"Love, me"

When I woke today there was a plush, lavender-scented stuffed bear under my IV-heavy arm. And tied around its little bear wrist with a little pink ribbon was a note, "Love, me".

I love burying my face as deep into the polyester as I can get it, I love breathing in that floral hypnotic.

I love how hooked I have her, a barbed needle lodged in her skin just like she's stuck in mine.

I'm not sure what happened next, exactly per se. "Cardiac arrest", they call it. "Clinically dead", they call it.

When I came to again, the bear had been taken from my weak, sickly grasp just like she was. It stares at me sadly from a small bulk purchased dresser against the wall next to the bed. Just out of my reach. Just like her. I've abandoned the lake and its blissfully ignorant inhabitants in favor of my new bunk mate, its shining button eyes pathetically pleading with me to heed its only given instructions; "Love, me". I wish its furry little bear ears weren't deaf to me when I swore that Imogene is, in fact, the only thing I've ever loved. The only thing I ever will.

That sweet silly child's toy is the only tangible evidence I have of her existence, save the hot pink scars marching and healing all up and down my person, and they're disappearing. My heart's faint "ba-bump" slows and shushes just thinking about her, thrilled by the idea she had returned yet again, maybe even cooled my skin with her hand while I dreamt of her.

"Love, me"

Big sigh.

The very thing that rendered me too ill to sustain myself, while somehow managing to be the one thing that keeps this dilapidated body from giving out entirely.

"Love, me"

Oh I love you alright.

I love you to death.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP