Somewhere beneath the city, a woman whispered to the world, two hundred years after her death.
Journal Entry – May 10th, 2025
Grief doesn't fade. It sharpens. Softens.
Then it waits in the corner until it speaks in letters, I don't remember writing.
Maybe writing is the only way to keep from disappearing with him.
Maybe these pages are the only place where the version of me that still remembers how to love can survive.
Everywhere I looked, he was still there.
His desk was still scattered with papers as he had left them. Papers I never made sense of. He wrote in science, and I wrote in poetry.
The green snake mug that sat on that same desk, stained with old coffee.
It was from his favorite book, the house he belonged to.
One of the reasons we first connected. It was one of my favorites, too.
It made me laugh when we first met. That a coffee mug could reveal so much about you without even saying a word.
He asked me what was so funny, and I just couldn't stop.
"I hope your mug just means you're intelligent and ambitious in a good way," I finally said.
Then he looked down at his mug and returned the smile before asking my name.
We have been inseparable since that day.
Now it just hurts to remember it.
It sits there like it's waiting for him to pick it up again, like I should leave it untouched or risk shattering the memory.
A memory I didn't want shattered, but didn't want around either.
Sometimes I forget he's gone until I catch myself reaching for him—mid-thought, mid-laugh, mid-life.
I haven't touched his computer. I still feel like he might walk through the door and sit down like nothing ever changed.
Books are still piled around the monitor, and I miss our club of two.
We hadn't even finished this month's current read, about a girl with a yellow-eyed nightmare tapped in her mind.
My husband really got involved in this one. He said he liked the nightmare and that he had to have been misunderstood.
I couldn't bring myself to finish it, so it sits covered at my bedside table.
I still form sentences meant only for him, inside jokes, passing thoughts, they haunt me more than any nightmare ever could.
I tilted my head, hoping to catch a glimpse of something else, but it didn't matter where I looked.
The shelf of anime seasons waits, like we might still binge-watch them on a Sunday, and I'm reminded of why I stay in bed all day.
I think about moving, but I can't
I was more co-dependent than I ever admitted.
Most days, I stayed hidden in the guest room since the hospital after the accident.
But today was different.
Today would've been our fifteenth anniversary.
So, I slept in our room last night, but to say it was peaceful would have been a lie.
I didn't get up this morning, out of a need for survival.
I got up because the silence felt too loud—because lying still had started to feel like forgetting.
And he didn't deserve to be forgotten.
No matter how painful.
And I didn't want to become the kind of person who could forget him.
I pulled myself out of bed, fighting the grief like a weighted blanket pinning me down.
The cold floor sent a jolt through my heels.
It felt deserved.
I didn't look in the mirror; I wasn't ready to see the woman left behind.
I just reached for the hoodie with the faded symbol from our favorite anime.
I slipped the soft black cotton on over my head and moved near our bedroom door, when it hit me like a cloud full of rain.
It smelled like time and dust and wrapped around me like a memory.
His hoodie still left his scent, and it was too late to turn back the last few moments before putting it on.
It was a dream that couldn't be forgotten, even if I never washed it away.
I kept going, my feet sliding against the hardwood floors as I moved through the hallway, slowly and quietly, like the house might wake up if I made too much noise.
The emptiness was unsettling, so I transitioned to tiptoeing around like prey, hoping the shadows haunting me would miss today.
The canvases were veiled in dust, settled like silence waiting for a moment that never came. A moment where I would be ready to clean, but I didn't want to change anything, even the smallest speckle of dust that might have been from him.
I told myself I'd walk today. Bring flowers to his grave. Emerson's grave.
His name even haunted me, but I needed to learn to say it again, or at least think it.
I thought I might even read to him, if my voice held steady.
If I could borrow enough of myself from before.
He'd like that, I think—the old Emerson.
The one who believed words had weight, even after they were gone.
I grabbed a book from the round wooden coffee table without looking.
We had books everywhere in our small, quaint home, and it didn't matter which one—he loved them all like they were pieces of truth.
And if I stopped to put any thought into it, I might have crawled back under the covers.
I needed to keep pushing forward for him. For me.
The sky outside was the color of grief, muted and breathless, like the world had paused in mourning.
The outside was bigger than the inside. We like having a lot of land to be outside in, to read near the trees while also keeping them just far enough away from the house.
The driveway stretched longer than I remembered, each step pulling me further from the life I once knew.
It never felt long when he was waiting at the end.
I finally reached it, and it had felt like an accomplishment I didn't know I needed to reach. But for a moment, it felt good.
I found a single envelope in the mailbox.
No return address. No name.
Just the weight of paper and a letter waiting inside.
I glanced over my shoulder without meaning to, skin prickling, but the street was empty.
Maybe it had been sitting there for days, just waiting for me to be ready.
Something about it felt wrong before I even touched it.
But grief makes you reckless in strange ways, it dares you to hope, to feel something.
So, I opened it, ripping the envelope across the top, my hands refusing not to shake as I became anxious...
"My dear Hasley,
I see you struggle daily, and I know you can push through this.
Please survive for us.
I believe in you. Always."
My heart was still.
Emerson? My heart sank into the pit of my stomach.
No-Impossible.
But something in me cracked just hearing his name in my mind again.
The words pressed against the hollow places inside me, fitting too neatly.
I let myself believe, for just one fragile, aching breath, that maybe he was still alive.
I closed my eyes, pretending the letter had never been there.
But its words stayed lodged beneath my ribs.
Hope is cruel when you're not ready for it.
I wanted to believe it was from him.
But I was afraid of what that would mean, that I'd finally lose track of what was real.
And if I lost that, I wasn't sure I could come back from it.
I tucked it back into the envelope and placed it carefully inside the mailbox, like hiding a wound no one else could see.
Maybe whoever left it would think I never found it.
Or maybe… that's just what I needed to believe.
I continued across the road to the path, to the family graveyard. His family.
Liora was a strong last name to have. And that meant all Liora's came here.
The path is uneven, like my emotions today.
The wildflowers were blooming, just like they always did this time of year, which was the reason we chose May for our wedding.
Although our wedding had creeped me out just a little, a graveyard wedding was something I had never heard of until it was happening to me.
It was their tradition to have everyone there, dead or alive.
I knelt to pick a handful of the flowers to place on his headstone, their colors only reminding me that I no longer had the one I called my everything.
I stood up quickly, my head didn't agree, as I wobbled a step, trying to regain my balance.
The path grew heavier with each step, like the past was rising to meet me, until I reached his grave.
Emerson Liora
Beloved Son and Husband.
His headstone is shiny and new, black with gold specks.
He died just a few months ago, when the ground was still slick.
I opened the book I brought after placing the flowers on top of the stone; they looked nice against the black.
I couldn't spit out the words, so I placed the book on the stone as well.
My mind was still wrapped in questions. In anger.
We shouldn't have driven that night.
I wanted to scream at the earth. beneath me, where he rested, to ask why he left me here.
But my voice cracked with silence instead.
Emerson was going to change the world.
It should have been me who died that cold, dark night.
I rubbed away the water leaking from my eyes, surprised by its warmth.
But maybe… that was never the plan.
Maybe the world still needed him in ways I couldn't understand.
Or maybe
It needed what he became.
Reading Hasley's words felt like stepping into a trap I hadn't asked for.
Why me? Why now? And what the hell am I supposed to do with this?