There isn’t much to say. Sometimes, things just are as they are, and no matter how much of a deeper meaning a person wants to put into them, it just isn’t meant to be.

She put the pencil behind her ear and began to read what she had written. The solid three words had been written over and over again, tracing the lines so much that it was close to a miracle the pencil hadn’t gotten through to the desk.

He is dead.

Three words that were somehow the truth, she knew, though it felt like a lie. Three small words that had changed her life so drastically, and yet she had no more words to describe what she was feeling. What had happened. Why it had happened. 

Nothing.

Absentmindedly, she once more took hold of the pencil and slowly started to trace the lines again. She didn’t consciously choose any line to start from, but simply put the pencil down and started from there. Letting her pencil follow the ragged edges of the letters that some had, adding to the thickness and the erratic way they had been scribbled, switching it up other places and carefully lining them, giving the words depth and shallowness. Chaos and calm. 

A depth she couldn’t quite explain. 

Another thing words couldn’t quite capture.

“What am I doing?” She whispered out loud. 

If he had been there, he would have responded. He would have made fun of her for talking to herself. He would have smiled and asked her, “Yes, what are you doing?” 

And suddenly she would know, just know, what she was doing, like she so often did. Sometimes she just knew.

But the repeated question from a different and deeper voice didn’t come. Instead,  she was only met with the sound of pen on paper and strangling silence.

If she could cry, she would have. 

She would have mixed the tears with the lines and made the letters even more unrecognizable, somehow tricking herself into thinking that they were fake. A lie. Something that could be erased and redone. Thrown into the trash and started over. Anything.

Yet, her tears were not able to flow. No matter how much she had blamed herself for not even doing that right. She was supposed to grieve, after all. She was supposed to cry, show it to the world, and make everyone see her sorrow. 

Instead, she had simply gone about her life. Living. Making it through the day, with nobody around her any the wiser. However, she didn’t know how to feel it properly. She still didn’t feel it as something that had happened, though in her mind she knew.

It felt like watching a movie while feeling sleepy, with a vague awareness of what was going on, but not being able to repeat it if anyone asked.

And what had happened back then?

She stopped scribbling, leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes.

If she tried hard enough, she could barely make out the landscape of that winter night. Snow falling slowly, covering the ground in a layer that was not quite thick enough to make it entirely white. The moon was half covered by clouds, providing just enough light for shadows and silhouettes to be seen. 

She’d rather it had been entirely dark. Complete darkness would be more comforting than a sliver of light, making everything seem wrong.

But in that moment, she liked the light. It had made her able to see him. See his figure, the way he moved, the direction he walked.

Until he wasn’t there anymore.

She had run over toward him, following the barely visible footprints in the snow, only for them to stop at the exact spot she had lost sight of him.

At first, she thought she had been crazy. That somehow, he was playing a prank on her as he often did. But as she looked around, she couldn’t see where he could have gone off to.

There were no trees. No high buildings. Not even a bush he could have hidden behind. Maybe, if he was able to fly, there had been some sort of chance for that to be the explanation, but then she should have seen him fly off.

He was just gone.

Gone, but not dead.

At least, that was what she told herself, and kept telling herself all the way home. Into her apartment, while she took off her shoes. When she got ready for bed and especially when she was laying there alone, the cold side of the bed making it painfully obvious that he indeed was not there.

Neither was he there when she woke up, when she went to work, when she got back home, or when she went looking in daylight, where he had disappeared.

At that point the snow had melted, along with the single and only lead she had.

His disappearance was, of course, not enough for her to think he had died. Far from it. She was more anxious about where he was than anything. She forgot to even think about the why and how from time to time, focusing more on going through her life without him, than any reasons for why she needed to do so.

She was haunted by his twisted grin, clear in her mind, so often asking her, “What would you ever do without me?”

She never responded. She hadn’t needed a response, not needed to think about it. He would always be right there beside her. That was a universal truth. Something she had never thought to doubt.

But now she knew. She had an answer.

Keep on living.

Three small words. It was as simple as that. Even with him gone, she went to work. She did what she had to do.

Even without his side of the bed being warm, she slept.

She lived on autopilot, not allowing herself to think too much. To question too much. It would only hurt her in a way she wasn’t ready to face, nor handle.

Until one day, three months after he had disappeared.

Suddenly, she had just known. The way she so often did. Even if she didn’t know the why or how she knew the conclusion.

A gut-feeling so clear, a thought so cutting, that it couldn’t be ignored.

Without much thought, she had stopped what she was doing, gone to her desk, and written the three small words she had refused to believe, for the first time. The time where the lines had been scribbled with stress and panic, anxiety and confusion. Unlike the footprints in the almost-white snow, this wouldn’t melt away no matter how much she wanted it to. These words wouldn’t disappear.

He is dead.