Dear Wind

When grief takes over your world and everything reminds you of what you have lost. When a little voice still says they're not gone, but their absence tears you apart either way.

I see them in everything. In the darkness surrounding me at night, in its shadows chasing me during the day. In the early morning fog, laying low upon the earth like a blanket, suffocating, stealing the air from within my lungs. I smell them in the rain-stained earth, hear their voice in the creaking of the trees and the rustling of leaves as I walk through the forest. I feel them in the stillness of the world when the wind decides to lay low, in the midst of all the chaos they are my eye within that storm. I miss them in those moments, in the times I realise just how alone I am. I miss them when the world goes silent, when the birds forget to sing, when the wind refuses to howl. I miss them when the world reminds me of their absence. I miss them when it reminds me how their presence once felt. When the wind is all but silent, when the air feels thick with violence. When the chaos comes to get me, the lack of peace drowns me in war. When all rivers try to drown me, when the voices cloud my mind, when the wind is screaming my name, I miss the peace that I once felt. Oh how I miss their calming presence, Oh how I hope they’re still alive.

 The weight of my loss weighs on me heavy, like a blanket of water wishing to make me drown. 

The lack of you tears me apart. 

Dear wind, I never imagined my world could exist without you. I never realised how much you moved me, pushed me, pulled me. I am a body of water with only the moon left to sway me. Back and forth, but never forward. Your absence takes my freedom away, as your presence once did to my breath. What am I to do, dear wind, when the air’s gone still, the silence jarring? And when your storm wreaks havoc upon the trees and the houses scream and crumble, do I hear you call my name? When the wind forces me down, when the air I breathe is toxic, is that you who claws at me? 

When the howling wind starts sounding like my name, I am reminded of your absence. When the night stills me inside, when the darkness has consumed me, might I join you in your terror? When your smell presents itself, I’m ricchocheed back to that past. The past in which I held your hand, in which my lips caressed your neck as you had breathed my name against my skin. 

Everything alive reminds me of you, everything dead fills me with dread. For you were once my perfect hero. You were my shadow, my right hand. You were my friend and my protector, you were the whisper in my ear. Now I have lost you to the shadows, lost you in the breeze upon my skin. Gone with the wind, perhaps forever. 

So every time I feel that kiss upon my skin, the slight caress of air within, I know it’s you. The darkness reminds me again that you are not here. That once brought me fear as my hope was crushed again and again. I imagine that, perhaps, I sound insane this time, but the lack of air within my lungs, the lack of light within my eyes, the lack of voices calling my name, it all reminds me now of you. Perhaps your absence forms your presence. Perhaps you never were more than the night. 

Dear Ash, Dear spirit of the wind, though your body has long left me, I know your soul will stay alive. You live in stories and in secrets, you live in whispers in the wind. I feel your presence in the air I breathe, in the power that still moves me. You are the force that pushed me forward, you are the reason I can see. 

Dear wind, thank you for always being there, you are the sound and silence of my world.