my wife loved blackberries.

i had never noticed how they grow everywhere here.

on the side of the road, under bridges, in the cracks in the sidewalk.

you can’t avoid them and i try not to.

they say it gets better.

that the passage of time erases the loss.

i pray that that is not true.

i can no longer remember her laugh, or the sound of it.

i can no longer remember the sound her chest made when she inhaled.

wrinkles around her eyes that grinned in unison when she was surprised

the feeling of cold sweat on her nervous palms when we hadn’t seen each other in a few days

her feet shuffling to the hallway in the morning and it’s perfect cadence are all also gone.

they say that everyday it hurts less but this pain in my chest

the feeling that i still can’t completely catch my breath

my terror that this may all be true and the horror that it is indeed

my empty rib cage where she fit so perfectly even on the most sleepless of nights

are all but the very last reminders that she was real

here with me

not a school boys dream crush dreamt and shaped to perfection on the backs of eyelids

not the beautiful lead character in a story made up to impress my childhood friends

not the product of an overactive underfed tender little love starved ache that lived in my soul until the day that we met

she was real.

beautiful and kind.

slightly flawed in all the best ways.

she had never shot drugs when i met her and i was her first.

i didn’t fight it and she didn’t fight.

it seemed to make sense that she would be with me in that way.

like some weird ritualistic bloodletting wedding ceremony

the blood is the life

her parents say, still say that i killed her

and i agree.

i did kill Cassie.

i killed someones child,

i killed someones love,

i killed my future and i killed my happiness

they say it gets better

and i pray that that isn’t true.





This is a guest piece by my bff K Sabatini, seen here.

The writer's father