It's the quiet moments,
the ones where there isn't much going on,
when it hits him all over again,
fresh as if it were new,
and he remembers
the way that his parents would ask him to go with them
on a trip, remembers
that one day, he'd discovered
that they had picked places he would have liked,
had added destinations to their travel ideas
based off of his interests:
his favorite writer's home,
or even the way that his mother brought home
a sweater for Subaru, one that he still wears
practically all the time
It's his favorite sweater,
at the time,
it was just a nice shade of blue
and a comfortable sweater
Now, it's a little different
for a moment when he slips it on,
he can picture his mother
and her joy over gifting him something he likes,
and for a moment,
it's as if really nothing had changed,
as if a tour bus didn't crash,
as if he didn't go to their funeral
For a moment,
he's warm
and both his parents are home,
and he's able to just be near them,
Haru walks over,
her little white paws gently scrape the floor,
and then she crawls onto Subaru's lap,
and he isn't so alone,
even as he pets his cat
he misses his parents
more than he'd known he ever could
back when they were alive.