[ He drinks slowly, blowing the steam off the top of the tea and nods. He knows, how well he knows. ]

I cannot tell you it becomes easier. It does not. [ He takes a mouth, thinking on it. ] It's been months now, and I still do not know how to move past it. Busy myself, perhaps, work and endeavor to do all I can so that I cannot think.

Only then, she was who I would tell all things to, sometimes I find myself walking and it is how I would walk with her. We would spend hours just as that, and for a second, I forget that all has happened, and I go to speak to her, to turn to her, to expect her remark or reply.

But there is nothing, no word, no touch, no soft muttered thing, the only thing that greets me is that same silence where she should be, and I lose her all over again, then. It never goes cold like that. It seems there is nothing to do but live with it. Wear it for what it is.

[ it's not exactly true, she does speak to him, and that's what makes it worse is before, he had her, soft in the palm of his hands and her words were a torrent of suffering in his head and it is agony because she sounded so mournful, desperate, and he could do nothing because it was all he had left. But in that, for those first raw months, six long months where they cut him and bled him and burned him, there had only been the weight of her absence pressing down on him. ]

And it is then, I just wish, she would let me be. Let me rest. Let any of it go. [ his head still down, watching the tea quietly. ]