TW: Drowning, death, grief

The days pass like a still river, each droplet pressing past eachother but moving at such a pace it is barely noticable.

The weeks pass like the waves in an ocean, crashing fast before another one appears.

The years, however, pass like a waterfall, the persistance press of time on your shoulders and the weight of ever growing pressure and uncertainty.

Last year, I would have never guess what would have happened today.

Last year, everything was perfect.

But last year passed like a waterfall.

I loved her. She was my best friend, my lover, the one I looked up too when everything else was lost. She liked to wear clips in her hair that reminded her of her childhood, and still wore the bracelet her younger brother made for her sixteenth birthday.

She loved the feel of wind on her skin, as it pressed against her delicately and brushed through her long locks of hair. She loved the beach, the feel of soft sand beneath her feet and the smell of a familiar saltiness that filled her lungs with hope. Most of all, however, she loved the water.

To her, water was like the calm in the storm, it was the light in her darkness, and most of all, it was her element. Whenever things got tough, she would go for a walk to the nearby beach and tred along the boardwork, just listening to the waves crash against the shore and the seagulls sqreech in all their glory.

What she wouldn't know, however, is how something she had onced loved so dearly would also be the reason she never got to experience it again.

Last year, we had gotten into a fight. It was a trivial thing, easily solved, not that big of a deal, but we where still angry. She still needed calm.

It was dark, the sun slowly setting behind the trees and casting moonlight shadows across the sand. I could imagine her tracing her own shadow with her eyes, the faint lines barely visable in the shallow light the moon produced. She would focus on the way her heels dug into the sand, and look back every now and then to peek at the long trail of footsteps that had been temporarly marked in the sand.

After a while, she would wonder over to the shoreline, and let the water lap at her ankles. She would close her eyes and tilt her head to the sky, breath deeply as she smelt that salty sea air that she loved so much.

She would step deeper, feeling the water chill up to her knees, as boosbumps erupted on her skin. She didn't find them uncomfortable, or shy away from them. To her, they where a natural beauty that appeared, a way that her body reacted to the nature around her. To her, those reactions where a beautiful thing.

She walked up to her waist. The water lapped around her as though trying to urger her deeper, closer to its heart. It lapped around her hips like a hug, slowly rippling like a belt attatched to an invible rope. The waves where calmer here, like the rolling of hills rather than the overwhelming peak of mountains.

And yet, the waterfall still crashed.

An unsuspecting waved pulled her under, trapping her beneath the suffocating blanket of vast ocean and darkness. Sea swirled around her.

I don't like imaging this part. All my research leads towards the most painful conclusion: she must have been terrified, desperately trying to swim up and gasp for oxygen, her lungs screaming and muscles clenching at a desperate attempt to breach the waterline. After all, despite her intense love for the ocean, swimming wasn't something she'd ever learnt as a child. She loved the unpredictability, but it hadn't occured to her that a situation like this would arise. She'd told me before: "I will be safe, my darling. I promise."

I promise.

I promise.

I promise.

The last promise she ever made and the last promise she ever broke.

Instead of listening to what they tell me, and instead of thinking that she died brutally, I like to imagine a more softer ending: she was surrounded by her favourite things. Silence, peace, and the uncomfortably welcoming blanket of ocean.

She never returned home, and only a body was found softly bobbing along the quiet still of a river.

Last year was different: we were happy.

This year is different: something is missing. It isn't something I can replace, or return, or find, because it never went missing.

Love will be in my heart always. Last year, this year, and all the years to come.