Insomnia

From the day they had met until the day she died he had always known she was an insomniac. Her most entertaining emails and their deepest conversations were exchanged across many late night hours. So when they told him she had died peacefully in her sleep, it was only natural that he questioned his very existence and everything else on this earth that he had thought to be true.

Grief came and became increasingly difficult to shake off when the day came to a close and he wanted to sleep. He could only think of life, of the life in her. He could only think about how touching her was like wading into a lake in the Summer and bending forward to capture the ripples as they danced across the surface of the water. Impossible in your thoughts - but achievable when you put your mind to it.

Yet alone at night without her body alive with energy and aching to write beside him, he felt empty. It was during these times that he understood they had never really belonged in any comprehensive part of the world. He knew, in the depths of his heart where the grief curdled and poisoned the blood red life, that they hadn't ever belonged to each other.
And he knew how, just like the ripples on the lake in Summer, it was all a mirage. He had never really held a part of her at all.