"Why have you stopped writing? You always write." I twisted the black pen between my fingers as my friend interrogates me hoping the leaking ebony would be excuse enough. I can feel the worry lines increase in her face as her hazel eyes scrutinize me like my face is a magic 8 ball and the answer will appear after she shakes me.

I confess as she's about to give up. "After the words leave my mind, and enter the world, the feeling they had, on me, numbs in my chest. When my ink stains this paper, I will no longer feel what I did in that moment I wrote about.

It's only been a week and the way his voice melted into my heart has cooled. I can't lose these last moments of him. He's not coming back. These memories have to last me the rest of my life."

I lace my hands together trying and squint my eyes. I try to picture, to feel, his calloused hands after chopping wood or strumming a guitar. Or recall the smell of organic soap that trailed behind him as he paced around the room. And memorize the colossal words he spoke that had me living in a dictionary after he left because he was the advanced English literature type of guy. But most of all, I remembered the way he made me feel. No one else would make me feel that way. How my heart was forever beating out of my chest to the rythem of his drums. And no amount of endless conversation with him, even if they grazed over my head, would ever be enough. My last few moments with him will never be enough. And I will be selfish, and keep them to myself, because I can't bare to part with the ache in my chest. This ache will be my memoir, that he was real.