I’m going to try and put into words, this experience made too ephemeral, this moment crafted premature, this time intended for never and not yet but arrived just the same. Oh Duo, for how I miss you. How dearly I cannot say for language falls short in constructions of eternity and the infinite. These memories and moments with you seer beneath my skin, for forgetting, is a sin and I intend to be a saint. Though I’m sure this prose is more for me than for you, these words stand as a small testament to you and our time together. Though I can’t hold you any longer, I hope that this passage will preserve a piece of you everlasting.

What can I truly say other than I miss your large bright green eyes. Oh, now they used to look at me like I was home. A place I feel for me I hardly know but for you was within me. This peace I had because I was able to provide for you something that I had long forgotten myself. This yearning, I feel and wish I would see them truly looking at me one more time. That love I felt when you would do was almost comedic in character because how could it have been? I had always felt so undeserved, but you paid no mind to my insecurities and faults.

It’s in that memory of laying with you, and how you revised the way I slept that I found peace. The way you insisted on laying between my legs felt so warm and weighty that in my absence, I cannot sleep. I burn for the way you used to keep me in bed long beyond my morning alarms. The way I would play tardy with you, and the world would pass us. I savor the moments for I was with you because for those moments, I felt whole with you in reach.

It’s in your soft fur that my fingers can still touch. The way you would acquiesce to my whims, begrudgingly but trusting. The peaceful confidence you displaced traversing the world. The way your brother relied upon you to make sure the sky was not falling, and that there was always a warm place to lay his head. The way I knew you would always come back around so I would never need to chase.

I wish I could wake to you. Those visions of it all being a terrible dream and that it was only a manifestation of a worry gone too far. For my days have gone to grey waiting for you to return through that front door that you left through. For that night I can’t escape, that stain on the concrete and grass; that deep red turned to various shades of rust and grey. Something broke inside for me that night, and I don’t know if it will ever be made right. I pray for you every night that you come home and pray that if you cannot that you at least are happy someplace else. Oh, how I miss you so much.

It then a tragedy of that night that these flashes of the pain of memory keep these bittersweet memories sufficiently somber. Through their experience, I become darkened further because how can a light like yours be put out. Like others in this situation, I blame myself, wishing I hadn’t let you out that night because I didn’t; you might still be here. I can’t escape you but nor do I want to. I just want the pain to finally subside so I can enjoy memories of you without this inexplicable dark from arising. A pain that is both a curse on my heart but also a blessing of your existence. I know with time, I will heal, but that will not make me yearn for your soft fur and heavy frame any less. It’s my arms I wish you would still be, wasting and watching days go by, making life a little easier and more worthwhile.

I remember when you first came home that I used to lay awake at night, making sure you were still breathing. I would sit there watching your tiny frame anxiously until I could see that hearty breath in and be relieved that you were still there. I would worry you would be gone from me any moment, but when that worry stopped you were gone, and I didn’t know how to pick up the pieces. That night I carried you and had hoped you were warm. I saw end the end of your breathing, and I felt you and your soft fur grow colder. I wish I knew to do more, but I was helpless in front of this fate.

It’s unfair, and I know life is never that way, but why did it have to be you. The blood on my clothes and the towel I wrapped you in, markers of a life that could not be spared. I suffer the trials and tribulations of the world knowing the punishment should fall on me but in a split moment, the world collapsed around you for no more reason than it feels to prolong a certain sense of wretchedness. I would take the world on my back to protect you from harm and yet I could not protect you from danger and chance. What purpose could lie in this, a lesson that could not learn some other way. That is to say I miss you, so dearly that don’t have words to describe. I would trade it all for you and I wish you were still here. I wish above all else that could see those bright green eyes look at me again and have those mornings with you. Oh for how much I love you Duo, I always have.

At the end of this, what I wish I could tell you is
until the stars burn out.
and the sky goes dark
I will always love you

Goodbye Duo, I didn’t deserve you, but you came to me anyways. I will take care of Hero and everything else. And I hope, deep in the purest place in my heart, to see you again.