If you keep it simple, it all stays the same.

Whether a year could go past, whether it was months, he’d lost his track ages ago when his tragedies toppled on top of each other like feeble dominoes placed wearily beside each other. The time smoothly flew against his back as if it was delicate smoke placing hold to his face. 

The apartment was no different, even a year post it all. 

Clothes strewn across the floor that tripped you if you didn’t watch your step, a stray bottle or two she’d left sitting half-full or empty, usually toppled over, a stray drop usually placed liquid and still on the floor beside it. His own soul was swarmed beside it, he felt it in his chest, and the gaudy apartment complex kitchen he sat knee-down inside. With a huff of a breath, and the sour smell of liquor course on his own air, he lifted himself to his feet, unsteady and almost toppling as he brought himself to a stand. His eyebrows pressed narrow, and he scanned his area to take it in again, a year from it all.

Besides her clothes, he noted the memories that still remained once more. Someone he used to know, still present whether her body was physical or not.

A picture frame sat still on a dirty, dust-ridden cheap kitchen table, dings and dents pushed into the edges from when they’d both tried fitting it in a busted pickup. Her face, even as different as it was in the end, a year ago, stood young and exuberant, life still full and shimmering in her hazel eyes, just like smoke.

His breath, once more passing from his lungs, flickering in the air with dust and decay following with it. His arms reached ahead, skinny and pale, any ounce of their nourishment fallen flake to the world around him. The loss he felt the second her last breath rang out was trench-deep.

He knee-crawled toward the frame with weary joints and reached up, taking a hold of it in his hands, and pulled it back down to himself. Cold, blue eyes locked to the thin plastic layer over the frame, his thumb tracing circles.

That cold, cold feel of ice tickled his shoulder, before the sensation became a soft grip. A slight murmur, an ease maybe. 

“You’ve thought about it enough. It’s been a year.” It croaked.

He huffed a frail wheeze, and set the frame aside, easing back into a sit. “A one year anniversary,” He blinked, curling his arms around himself. “And what do I have to show for it?”

There was silence for a moment. He didn’t look back. 

“You’re declining.” It said.

“Unbelievably.” He glanced beside himself to a half-spilled pop bottle, and took it, stealing a small sip.

The cold feeling intensified, and to his other side he could see a pale, spectre-like apparition, but he kept his glances down and forward to the picture frame. Whoever, whatever, there was someone. Someone there.

“When it all goes, whether it’s painful or not, or how I’m gonna feel or whatever.. I think,” He thought for a moment. “I’m pretty okay with it, I mean, I don’t think I can deny what was good or bad. Shit happened, it still is and, I just don’t know how to think about how I spent it.”

Silence, and then it spoke again. 

“You did what you could. You did everything for her.”

He spun the bottle gently, thinking for a moment. “I suppose I did.” He paused. “She was pale.”

“That’s how it goes, usually.”

He snickered. “Well, yeah, when you’re that sick.” 

“It doesn’t nullify the grief, you don’t get something back but, do know you did everything.” It had whispered. “And it’s been a year.”

He turned, slightly noticing a familiar figure and face, something he could smell and remember almost a year ago, just far and beyond range.

“It’s been a year.” He repeated tenderly.

“And,” it began. “I do not mean this in any way harsh, nothing to push, nothing to bite you and tear you but, with that time.. do you think yourself ready.”

He hummed and tapped a finger to his cheek, shutting his eyes for a moment. “Run it all over for me again, let me think.”

“It has been a year. She laid beside you with the white sheets, a soft buzzing. The air was tart and stale-“ It began.

He interjected. “It smelled like smoke.”

“It smelled like smoke, and you took her hand-“

“A year ago.” Again.

“A year ago, and you told her how the day that day came again, you’d be ready to give her that final gift you’d been saving for her. You told her you’d give it to her straight to her face. But, when you turned to see her..”

The cold air turned chilled, tense and cold but, lifted upon the waves and gusts was the sense of devotion, soft and sweet. 

“She was gone.” It finished.

The feeling of distance was slowly closed inside himself, he felt. The chill took upon his cheeks, like two cold hands, and he grinned.

“So, I guess now is the time?” He asked, swiveling his head to meet cool hazel eyes, smokey and bright. 

And the face, pale beside him, coiled to a wry smile and an invitation to the anniversary’s promise he had cooed to her, in the stale-sheeted bed they’d laid together in the end, 

a year ago.