I Love You.

• Ella Gray, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2013

There’s this feeling. You know this one you get when someone you know goes. You know, forever. To the place you can’t reach and you feel like you can’t breathe. It’s like all the oxygen has been sucked out from the world, and your heart feels like its shattering. You try to remember them, the sweet memories that define them to you. I suppose you become sentimental and everything you have of them, you cling to as if you’re afraid that as you move forward you’ll lose sight of their memory. Those first few steps without them are the hardest, the walking stick that came when they were near is now gone. Around you, people stare. It’s as if they know. Like they stare into you and somehow know that there’s a huge chasm in your heart. Friends offer a shoulder, foes are temporarily more bearable. There needs to be an upside to all of this, but if there is I can’t see it and I’m not sure if I ever will. I see that I need to pay tribute to them and honour their short, but well-lived existence, but if that is the silver lining of my storm cloud – saying goodbye to them fittingly – I think the numbness from my heart has somehow crept into my field of vision. My regrets come to mind later that night, and as I fall asleep, I wished I had told them three simple words that are hardest for me to spit out; I love you.