There is an almost physical clenching in my heart as I try to write this. As I struggle to put us on paper, to make the reader understand what August was like for us. I could start at the beginning, but where is that? The memory of you is an undecipherable, tangled mess of old wedding photographs from when we were six and seven, to a mess of pictures from my last trip to your town.

I remember a smile was engrained into your face for almost the entire night. I remember running up to the ticket booth and paying my £2 for a ride. I remember you, with your vibrant green eyes that reflected unseeable storms and I remember the ripple of your muscles. I remember stealing glances at you as we span and swung and fair lights glistened everywhere. The taste of cotton candy is still fresh in my mouth, dissolving and bursting like the fireworks when we kissed. I remember sitting on the bench on the pier, you unwrapping a lollipop for me and me staring at you intently as you illustrated your scars and told me your stories. The raised white snakes of new skin covered your knuckles (from fighting), your muscled forearms (from fighting a different kind of battle), and your finger traced your shirt where, underneath, I would find the worst of it. And in that moment I knew I loved you more than every star in the sky because some force was pushing us together, something that made my heart scream when I had to leave you. Something that made my heart cry like the rain reflecting on the pavement. In that moment I felt the same fear as jumping off a cliff because you were now rooted in the deepest corners of my heart and I knew I cared about you in a way that I have never felt before. I remember the darkness between us in your living room, when you told me you loved me and I was swept away into a land where I didn’t ever have to leave you and you could hold me like that forever. I remember you.

I think that memory is the best place to start, because that was the initiating force that caused all the other memories; clutching on to your necklace as I sped to London on the train, watching you sleep on the webcam, hearing you promise me that you’ll always be there. We experience loss in many forms, and losing you was one of the worst. Distance is a force that has an immeasurable power to break incredible bonds, because I never thought that the memory of us on the pier would be shattered, the fissures running like spider web scars over its fading surface, and I’m reaching, futile, trying to hold on to it.