The bitter wind stings at my cheeks, burning as I stand over a shallow and muddied grave. This is where the man that I love now resides. In a cold and dark place. In a shallow and muddied grave.

The rain falls from the heavens masking the tears that I allow to slide from my face and the grey skies pale in comparison to the storm that brews in my heart as I kneel down to the ground, muddy water soaking through my jeans. I know that the water is cold. I don't feel that it is cold, though.

I don't feel anything anymore, except for emptiness.

I trace my fingers over the ring that he left for me. The ring that was meant to be so much more than a bitter reminder of the fact that even in death I couldn't utter the three words that I'm sure that he wanted me to whisper more than life itself.

Funny.

More than life itself.

I open my mouth to speak to him, as if he can hear me, as if I might say something that would stir him from the cold dark place where he now resides and he would respond.

"I can't do this without you." Is the first thing that escapes my lips, followed by "You made me love. You broke me down, you built me back up and you made me love. You made me need you more than I needed air, then you left me."

My hair falls forward into my face, wet, cold. And I only hurt more as I realize that he's not here to brush it away. He's not here to wipe the tears from my eyes, love in his, and tell me that it will all be okay, that I can get through this.

I don't believe in God, but it's at this point that I have to believe in Heaven.

I have to believe in something, because I cannot sit here over this muddied and shallow grave and believe that the man I love will lie here for eternity, a hollow and empty corpse with an unbeating heart and no purpose.

I have to believe that he's got purpose, somewhere, somehow that he's still...alive.

I scoff at myself and think of the pure thought of there being an afterlife, of there being a heaven. Thinking he's still alive, like he's watching over me or something.

Life is cruel, but death is crueler, and there is no such thing as a happy ending.

It's in this moment, that I finally realize that I loved him so much that I would rather be in the cold and dark place with him.

I would rather join him in death, then live without him.

And I couldn't even tell him that I loved him.