The sky weeps everyday now. Soft gray and white flurries fall mutely on the ground, turning Manhattana into a winter wonderland in April. 

Normally, I stay inside when it storms, but today is an exception. I light a cigarette. Sitting on a bench at the edge of Central Park, the hard wooden slats pressing into my thighs, I take a long drag and watch the smoke curl and evaporate. The delicate feeling of the paper reminds me of the first cigarette I had, when I couldn’t stop staring at the curve of his lips or ignore the warmth of his hand next to mine. The ghost of his touch leaves an ache in my bones as I remember the outline of his soul intertwined with mine, when we were still good and didn’t know how it would all end.

I’m running on dreams unforgotten and coffee, black, since cream and sugar are now a luxury. It’s been days since I’ve last seen a person in these empty streets, since I’ve heard my name called out. Sometimes, I say it aloud to remind myself that I have one. Not that it really matters anymore. I am nothing, have nothing, want nothing. But it’s nice to pretend, even for just a little bit, that I’m still someone who’s loved by another. 

On a whim of nostalgia, I visited that crappy apartment in the Lower East Side where we lived for two years after graduating. It was wet and dark, the smell of mildew and something decaying cloying my senses as I stepped around a pile of shit. The rooms were bare of all furniture except for the couch, now torn apart at the seams. But in my mind’s eye, the couch is new, still smelling like IKEA and imprinted with our bodies pressed together as we watched TV, always half lost in the comfort of each other’s arms.

He was a series of firsts for me. My first Valentine, my first boyfriend, my first love. The first time we got high, we cooked together. I couldn’t walk straight and ended up burning my wrist on the stove, leaving my skin sticky and raw. But he cleaned and wrapped the wound in gauze and covered me with so many kisses that there wasn’t an inch of me untouched. With my arms around his neck and his tangled in my hair around my waist, he made me laugh until I peed a little, and even then I was addicted to his caramel voice. It didn’t make the pain disappear, but oh god did the pleasure drown it out. 

Every moment we were together I lived and breathed home. I wanted to freeze time as we stood beneath the starlight and memorize the lines of his face as I traced them with my fingertips. Just for a second, let’s stay here like this. Because I’m scared this is all going by too fast and when will I learn that remembering opens up scars better left alone to heal?

I brush off the white flecks gathering on my jeans, the gray crumbling on my fingers and staining my clothes like soot. It’s getting late, and my cigarette has long since gone out. Although the fires have been tinting the sky blood orange, the city that never sleeps hasn’t lit up the dark since the beginning of The Spotted Frost. 

It all started with what looked like a mole. A tiny, harmless, white spot in between his shoulder blades. We were in Hawaii for our first vacation, sipping mai tais with sunsets in our eyes and sand in our hair. We hiked volcanos and ate poke, and spent even more time between the feather-light sheets of the hotel room bed. Blinded by bliss, it was easy to overlook the new aberration on his back with a passing remark in the steaming shower.

I should go. Get up from the bench and walk to the East River. I owe it to him and his child growing in my swollen belly to watch as his body goes up in flames in the pyre on Roosevelt Island.

The disease spread slowly. By the time we knew what was happening, the world was in chaos and it was too late. I had just told him the news that I was pregnant. He was ecstatic, gushing about wedding rings and cradles and what are we going to name her/him/them? We had finally saved up enough money to move into a new place, a better place. It was all perfect. The family with the love of my life was finally becoming a reality. There was nothing more I wanted than to brave the trials of life beside him. 

In the midst of wedding planning and moving apartments, I didn’t notice the changes in him right away. We were so busy that it was easy for him to hide the angry white splotches gnawing on his skin, eating at him from the inside out as it spread like mold down his arms and chest. When it reached his neck and wearing hoodies and sweats couldn’t conceal the truth anymore, I knew he only had a few more weeks to live.

It’s really time to go now. And yet I stay sitting. I know how it’ll go anyway, since I’ve seen the pyres being lit more times than I can count. Ferried in from the sick camps across the river in Brooklyn, they stack the dead bodies of those consumed by The Spotted Frost on the blackened wastes that was once Roosevelt Island. Heaps and mounds of the dead. Then they torch them until there’s nothing left except for their ashes floating in the wind, raining down on the city in layers of pale snow.

All of the sudden I’m running. My feet sink in the ashes and a wave of nausea roils through me, but I keep going towards the distant dark horizon. Tears stream down my face as I remember the sanctuary that was his arms, the way he made me laugh without having to try, how he held me steadfastly as I sobbed for hours, the shattered hopes of our future. I don’t want to miss my last chance at saying goodbye to my first love. I’m still blocks away from the water, and I don’t know if I’m going to make it in time.

My lungs wheeze and my legs burn, but the physical exhaustion is nothing compared to the sharp pain in my chest. If all I want is to see his face and hear his voice one more time, why does it hurt so much to think about? Maybe because I keep seeing him with the girls who aren’t me, see him pulling her closer as he kisses her with the same lips that told me we were forever. He had taken his secrets and lies to the grave, quite literally. And nothing in my world makes sense anymore. How did I not know? Was any of it even real? No matter how hard I try, I can’t forgive his betrayal.

I hate that even after everything, I still want you. I wish I could hold you one last time, hear your heart beating under my cheek, lose and find myself in you like I did when you were still mine. I don’t understand how you could do what you did, and I never will. I just miss you so much, and it hurts so bad. It hurts, it hurts, and I’m not sure how much longer I can keep holding on. Please, come back to me for one more night, one more hour, one more moment. I’m terrified to do this without you.

Until I can see you again, the ashes won’t stop falling.