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Loss echoes far longer than other emotions. It waits at your doorstep, a sullen black dog, shadowing you in even the most un-eventful parts of the day. In fact, it is those quiet times when its presence is felt most; you cannot help but hear its measured gait behind you, speeding up and slowing down to match yours; never a beat out of time. Loss claims you as its own, occupies your thoughts when you expect to be alone. It whispers in your ear, breathes down your neck, an un-nerving chill. It unsettles you, changes you; makes life feel like an unfamiliar set of steps that you are always an inch away from slipping down. Loss steals from you so that you are never again whole.

***

I love him.

The way he lets me rest my head upon his shoulder. To feel as though nothing can shake the foundations of the moment I'm living in. He feels warm beneath my cheek. Most people do; but his warmth feels special, comforting. I love that he smiles when it rains and finds pleasure in the morning sun. I love the days when he rises late; I stare at his face and watch the dappled light make patterns on his fur. I love his touch. Even brief. It scares away the thoughts that cloud a happy mind. Loving him is like a garden in bloom.

*** I loved him.

The way we danced, eyes closed, my snout against his chest, some invisible melody guiding our steady, carefree waltz. "Each is a new day," he'd say, and live by what he taught. I loved when we walked through the park, the way he'd turn, lock eyes with mine and brighten with a smile. The twitch of his ear, that signalled a laugh, never failed to make me swoon. His eyes, I miss them, brown, steady. Hours I would spend of a lazy afternoon, revelling in their depths.

He's gone. I cry. How can each be a new day when you are not by my side.

***

It's early morning. Last I checked it was two am. Three am. Another hour of nothing. I feel hollow. I will myself to sleep, turning sideways onto the wet pillow. The air is still, dead, like me. I like the dark; it's almost as though I'm still in his arms, deaf to the world. The dark is cold though, and he was warm.

The sun rises, slowly, taunting me. Another day of loss, not a new day without. I roll the other way. The birds begin their ritual cacophony. He'd call it a morning song; but he wasn't alone. All sound is harsh without the missing note of his voice. My mornings are no longer good, now that he is not there to will them so. I don't want to move, to see an empty house again. To walk on chilled, untrodden floors. Rising from bed is so hard when such a terrible weight wills against it. The sun makes a dappled pattern of light on the wall. I remember it on his fur, I choke.

Inch by terrible inch, I lower myself onto the floor. Standing will come later. My head swims and I feel dizzy. I've lost track of all the meals I've skipped; pushed and prodded incessantly on the plate to make myself think I was eating. I've given up on that now. I should be hungry, but my stomach feels acidic and foreign in my body, twisted and refusing to accept food. I stand and my legs pulse with pain, like the very blood in my body is boiling and congealing in my veins. I limp into the kitchen. Taking a glass from one of the drawers, I place it below the tap and watch it fill with water. I drink it, reluctantly; each sip seems vile and makes me gag with disgust. The day ahead seems long and arduous, unbearable almost. Perhaps it is. I don't have morning showers anymore, not since I remembered the ones we used to share.

***

"Ben, the last three months of counselling have shown what I would describe as pretty dismal progress. One of my colleagues described it as a consistently stubborn negative trend. What that makes me think is, that we may not both be doing our part to succeed in this process. I'll ask you again: are you sure you're doing all of the exercises I'm setting you to do in your own time?"

I looked at her. She seemed a blur to me in both matter in memory, a distraction from my mind's suffering.

"Yes. I told you." A gravelly mumble is all I could muster.

"I understand that, but your word and the actual fact of you having done it are two very different things..."

Fur greying around her nose, a narrow snout. Eyes, once brilliant blue, now a cloudy ice. She didn't understand; No exercise would bring him back.

"...I think you really have to start taking a more proactive approach to this. Moping about and wishing for the impossible is really going to degrade your quality of life and your potential."

"No." I didn't want to hear 'impossible.' It cuts me, makes the grief more real.

She sighed. Defeat, perhaps. The air seemed to escape her after a long-fought battle, on her part, to keep it.

"I'm trying here, Ben. I spend hours preparing for each session, talking to all the doctors about the best treatments; but I need you to take the plunge. To want to get better."

***

Nancy is a kind girl. She's helped me on more occasions than I can remember. Cleaned the blood from my fur when I'd fallen off my bike and didn't want my parents to know. Taken me to the school dance when no one else had asked me - upsetting her boyfriend in the process. Helped me to develop the confidence to ask Tom some place out. Taught me what love was when I discovered I was in it. She tries to help now, takes me to lunch on odd days. I don't know why. She may as well talk to a wall.

I sit still.

"It's quite warm in here." She proclaims, taking off her jacket. She does quite a lot of proclaiming, knowing that I won't answer. I find it uncomfortably cold.

She stares at me and I look away, pretending to study the menu.

"Do you want anything?"

"No."

"I hear the coffee here is the best for miles." The clock ticks painfully, making me acutely aware of the moments she and I waste here.

"You know, maybe you didn't really love him anyway..."

The statement hurts, cuts me. To think, that he loved me and I not, makes me loathe myself even more.

"There were so many guys I thought I wanted to settle down with that I just, stopped liking. I don't know why, just didn't really love them in the first place, I guess. But then you meet the right guy, like Jim, and you just know you love him."

Oh, I know; better than her, I think. When the snow fell and he hugged me from behind, resting his chin upon my head so that he might feel the chill and not I, I knew.

"I haven't met Jim yet." My meaning was clear.

"Oh. Well, I mean, he's still quite new. It's not really official - if that's what you're asking..."

"You love him more than Dean?"

"Well, of course. Like I said, loving Jim feels so... different."

"You said that of Dean. I never met him before you dumped him."

"Oh."

Silence. No more proclaiming.

"Look..." She began in a way I found all too familiar, "...You need to see past what's happened: Tom's death really was something that shook us all; to think an accident like that..."

"He killed himself."

"He didn't mean to!" She added hurriedly, a hasty, fantastical correction to lighten the piece of reality I had shared. The problem with Nancy was that she didn't really seem to live in reality.

"No more." I murmured.

"Yes. That's right, no more blaming and dwelling on the past..." That's not what I had meant, and she knew it.

"No more lunches. No more tiptoeing around the truth like some unfortunate, gruesome child you keep hidden away from sight. No more pitiful talk of the future from someone who lives six months at a time." I didn't want to say those words. They had to be said. I might have regretted them once; the old me.

I stood up, abruptly and stiffly, not quite used to the motion. Nancy jogged after me as I strutted disjointedly out of the café. I exited to open air, excited and moving, not still and stale like that inside. The silence, uncomfortable silence, was replaced with a burbling of chatter and city noise. Nancy reached out to me, tried to take my hand; I pulled it away. She kept jogging after me at an ever-decreasing pace, hoping more and more that I would turn around and realising, as well, that I was never going to. I could not see, I simply walked on to where my feet would take me.

I walked and the city seemed to shrink away, replaced by gentle hills and low cottages. Before I knew it, I was among the trees. The park Tom and I had spent so many days together in, time melting away, lost in each other's embrace. The clearing we had lay down in, heads together, in spring; listening to the bird's trill and chatter, and the trees sway softly - their trunks sighing - in the gentle temperate breeze. I can remember such moments so vividly:

Tom sat up against a tree, whistling some happy tune just a little out of key. I lay down, my head upon his lap, eyes closed, hearing it blend into the noises of the forest.

"Those purple flowers over there are so pretty. They must have just come into season."

I opened one eye, lazily, and looked at the plant in question.

"Not quite as pretty as you."

Tom grinned; it made my heart leap.

The trees stood over us - green - as fervent and as lush as our love.

I looked at the ground now. Well, I found it hard to look at anything - tears stung my eyes, blurring the present and longing for the past. Dead leaves sat curled and brittle where we used to sit. The flowers, long dead, were withered and black.

"Was it my fault you left?"

***

The brown mass on my plate looked woefully unappealing. 'Coq au vin' it had said on the packaging. It didn't look very much like that to me. The 'fluffy mashed potato' also seemed a bit of a stretch. I looked at my phone: Nancy had called. I put down my fork and sighed, cradling my head in my hands as I had seen my father do after a particularly hard day at work. My feet were tucked neatly beneath my chair. In the past I might have stretched them out - I was short enough to do so without disturbing anyone else - but Tom had used to tuck his feet under his chair, and it was silly things like this I clung to; that kept him alive in some regards. I liked to think of Tom as if he was still here, at the table, talking as he normally would. 'how was your day?' he'd open with, every night. 'Not bad.' I'd reply, every time, then elaborate.

"Pretty shit."

My voice cut the silence. I waited. Tears crept into the corners of my eyes. I stood up and walked to what was once our room. Just as he and I had left it. His smell had faded, but sometimes I'd come across some old shirt of Tom's that his scent still clung stubbornly to. For days I'd lie in bed and clutch it to my chest and revel in each second spent with a living remnant of him. I collapsed on the floor; my head buried in his side of the mattress. 'My' side of the mattress, the counsellor had remined me, it was now; I hated her for it. I opened his drawer. Inside were little notes I had written to him. Some were simple, trivial, day-to-day messages like: 'lunch twelve-o-clock.' Others were meaningful and passionate, little pockets of my love, frozen in time. No matter the purpose, he kept them all the same. He used to tell me he loved my handwriting. The way my t's did little loops and my m's flowed from one letter to the next.

When some people leave for another place, they write a note. Tom didn't. He always said he was going to keep a journal, and I always joked that he didn't have the discipline for it. What he thought when he decided to... pass away, I'll never know. My counsellor had told me I should confront his death - call it as such - stop inventing new ways to say it. I'd told her I hope she kicks the bucket before the next session. Tom would have found the macabre of it funny.

'If Tom could see you now, he wouldn't be very happy - he will have wanted you to move on.' I'd told her that she had not the faintest semblance of an idea what Tom would have wanted. Then I realised that I didn't really either.

***

I was feeling a little queasy. Stepping out of the house, by choice, alone, was not ranked well among other ideas I had had. The undying chatter of the crowd seemed to hammer into my temples and throb with pain behind my eyes. The colours and senses around me were overwhelming. I had been sitting on a small bench, within the shopping centre I was visiting, for close to all of my two-hour outing. Staring at the floor seemed the best counter to the pain of sensory overload. My eyes clumsily followed the ornate gold lace pattern laid onto the dark navy carpet. I was avoiding Nancy. It wouldn't be long before she came to my door, knocking and prying. The last time she had been allowed in my house, she had begun sorting Tom's old possessions into piles, carelessly ripping them from the sacred final positions he had placed them in. I had spent the remainder of the week agonising over the best placement of such objects, referencing the photos I had from the lighter time of my life.

I floundered, more-or-less blind, around the labyrinth of shops. When Tom and I visited, we'd look at the books. We both loved books. I recall sitting on his lap, a book in his hand, both our eyes trained on the page. I'd have read it two and a half times by the time he went to turn it, but I never said anything; I liked the experience of treading the unknown together. Sometimes he'd come to some dramatic or unexpected part and let out a gasp to signal it. A few seconds later I'd repeat it. Lost in memory, I smiled. I walked into the bookstore, crammed with narrow shelves of many pages - some new, some old. You might even wonder past a seldom-trodden section where a thin layer of dust covers a neglected volume, yellowing and bursting with character. I traced a finger delicately over the spines. What would interest Tom? For what seemed like weeks I plucked books from their places and buried my nose in the pages, drinking the words slowly as though a fine wine. I forgot about living; about the now. I was lost, again, in my love for Tom - revelling in the smile I might see on his face having chosen the perfect story. He'd be so excited to read it when I got it right. Calling me impatiently, not willing to start until both of us were ready. A bronze covered book with gold lettering on the spine caught my interest; I flipped through the pages, letting the pleasure of words in their right places, flow over me. He'd like that one. It was eloquent. Nuanced.

A bright-eyed raccoon, who I hadn't seen before, stood at the counter, seemingly enjoying the atmosphere of the shop. I placed my book down, carefully, aligning it with the edge of the desk.

"Just that one today?"

"Yes please."

"Would you like it gift wrapped?"

I smiled. "Yes please; it's for someone special."

He smiled in return, carefully folding the book in a layer of brown paper.

I took it when he was done and handed him some notes. I scurried away; book clutched to my chest. The noise didn't seem so intrusive now. To the contrary, it almost soothed.

***

The house was empty, still, when I arrived. I had expected that. Mostly. Some part of me hoped the time in the bookshop had changed something. Like the trance I had been in while looking at books was a sign of some horrible dream being lifted. I wish my life was a book. Then I could go back and re-read the parts I liked as many times as I wanted.

I sat in the old brown leather chair, for the first time in months, without Tom there with me. It seemed cold and reptilian without him; I sunk into it. I held the wrapped book in my hand.

"Tom."

I watched the air move slowly around me; little specks of dust being laid gently onto any surface they could find.

"I can't start without you." A weak whisper this time.

Sometimes crying holds no weight. It has been done too much to have any more value. I simply sit, and wait, and feel time pass without him.

When the house is dark and the birds have voiced their final opinions, I rise and take a detour to Tom and I's old room. I place the still-wrapped book carefully in an empty spot on the bookshelf. My gaze flickers across the other titles we shared together. I avoid the top left corner. That is where our favourite book resides; a simple tale that seemed to put not a foot wrong. I've lost count of how many times Tom and I have read it; each time together, never alone.

My bed feels unwelcoming. I wish I had not sat in that chair. Now the memory of me, solitary in its embrace, is more vivid than that of me and Tom in it together.

Please. Never leave my memory, Tom.

***

The postman doesn't normally come to my door. He deposits whatever it is outside and leaves me to suffer silently. But this morning's knock at the door is undoubtably his; I can hear the idling of the tiny two-stroke motorcycle he uses drowning out the pleasant sounds of sun-up. I answer the door. A little taller than me - perhaps; it's hard to tell when he's wearing shoes and I am not. His fur is a rich brown, that lightens to the centre, forming a stripe that runs from his chin to someplace lower; and also adorns from his feline nose to the top of his forehead, spreading out at his brown eyes. Like Tom's eyes. The familiarity is like lifting some long forgotten, frost covered food item from the back of the freezer: initial surprise mixed with childlike wonder.

"Uh, hello." His voice startles me, dragging me from the recesses of my mind.

"Yes... good morning." I have to coerce the statement out, as though it was unknown to me until a few moments ago.

"I have a letter here from the council, for Tom?" The end of the sentence is accompanied by a slight raise in tone, a question as to who and where this Tom is. Strange how someone so intimately known to me is nothing more than a mark on paper to another.

"He's dead." I blink a little as my eyes begin to wet. It's so sudden and un-yielding, that word.

"Oh. I'm sorry to hear."

We stand in silence; looking at one another to the constant thrum of the bike's engine. Both of us forget where we are for some reason or another.

"It's alright." My voice is thick and layered; a contrast to the airy, formal tone I used to greet him. I hadn't intended it to be as such.

He makes a motion, like he wants to comfort me with a touch, but decides against it and hands me the letter instead.

"Goodbye."

And he's gone. Leaving me, dressed in my pyjamas, to sway with the cold breeze that suddenly seems to have developed a sinister edge.

***

I've waited outside for the post every morning now. Something about the postman's eyes reminded me of Tom. If I looked at them for long enough, things around them slipped out of focus and I could almost be back in time, losing myself in Tom's eyes while the sun begun its journey below the horizon. We didn't say much to one another, but I was sure that there were occasions where I saw a slight smile on his face when he pulled up to my house; or I heard him whistle happily as we left. I wondered if he had lost someone too, whose eyes were just like mine. Did he make up stories about me? Or think about our strange acquaintance? I learnt his name was Jay; he learnt my name was Ben. Knowing the name of some faceless side character in the novel of your life never fails to bring them closer to the forefront. He was no longer faceless to me.

"Good morning." Or "Hello."

Followed by a mirrored greeting from myself. Some days I looked at him and smiled while I said it. Some days I didn't have to try and smile; it came naturally.

Tom used to get the post for me. The post made me think of him.

***

I don't quite know how it happened. A month of small pointless greetings, mixed with silences that said far more, seemed to change. Suddenly. One day he faltered as he handed me my letters.

"Did you love him? Tom?" How he guessed that Tom related to me in such a way I have no idea; but to have someone observe and scrutinise me enough to gather such a fact was more than a little touching.

"I love him. Yes." I smiled. Sadly, this time. He nodded and left; there was more post to deliver.

Another occasion, he'd arrived, my fur dishevelled and my eyes dull.

"Is everything alright?"

"The fallen leaves make me miss him."

He asked for no elaboration. Nodded and left. Though in that nod was more understanding than any question could have delivered.

"Your post." Neatly arranged and addressed, from his hand to mine.

"He loved Spring. He died with it."

I looked up at him. He simply looked back. Those who think that eyes cannot say as much as words have not studied them as close as I.

I began to look forward to the post. To being understood. He felt no need to comfort me falsely or help me forget my sorrow; invalidating it or vandalising the grave of my love.

"I like delivering post to your house." He'd said as the snow began to fall.

I'd nodded. He understood.

"No post for you today." Unusual. "But I wanted to give you this."

An unmarked, unsealed envelope.

"Thank you."

He smiled. I liked his smile.

I waited for a time to open it; I found that it was from him:

Hello,

I'm not meant to do this, but I suppose you deserve an exception. How does dinner some time sound?

Jay

I thought about the letter. About how he felt writing it. About how I'd felt when I asked Tom to dinner, moons ago. It felt invigorating, asking people you felt strongly about things such as this.

I thought a lot about Tom. About moving on and re-reading the past. I sat in his chair and clutched the wrapped book he'd love to my chest. I felt my heartbeat echo in the space between it and me. I remembered what it was like to feel two heartbeats. I'd forgotten how it felt to love a living breathing thing.

"I miss you, Tom."

The response I so desperately yearned for never came. A tear slid down the familiar path on my face.

***

I could hear his bike again. Did he love me?

I'm not sure I loved him. Not while I loved Tom. Can you love two people at once? Does enough love exist within a single person?

Jay approached me. He looked positively nervous; his little postman's cap slightly tilted on his head. His hand seemed to be shaking slightly as he gave me my letters.

"Dinner sounds excellent."

The sound of that statement washed over him. His ears flattened and his eyelids drooped slightly. We talked a little while more. About dinner and other things. Conversations such as these are ones you'd rather keep to yourself.

***

It was my turn to be a little nervous. A week from his letter we'd set aside for the dinner, and anticipation had eaten away at me. What is this dinner for? What does he expect? What does he think of me and how do I return it? I had forgiven Nancy, the morning preceding the dinner; If I hadn't, she'd still be calling at ungodly hours. I didn't want her to disturb this dinner. I don't know why. It's only dinner.

Jay arrived perhaps a minute or so late. A characteristic not generally associated with postmen. I wonder whether he had enough of being on time; being late must feel like a little afforded luxury to him. He too, was nervous. His eyes darted nervously around me, avoiding mine and glancing suddenly sideward when, somehow, ours met.

"How long have you been delivering the post for?" A simple question, it broke the awkwardness that exists between two that have feelings for one another that are difficult to voice.

"About three years now. I used to be a paper boy and found I enjoyed it lots; so, the natural progression was to become a postman. It sounds weird, but that's the best way I have to describe it." I nodded. "What do you do for a living?"

"I'm an architect. I work under my own firm, so the pay is pretty good, and I only have to work when I need the money." He nodded

His eyes were trained on mine. Neither of us looked away. Of all the silences we shared, this was by far the most intimate. Neither of us could bare to shift our gaze, to move. The waitress came to our table, announcing her presence with a subtle clearing of the throat.

"What can I get you guys?"

I looked at the waitress. Jay looked at the ceiling.

I gave my order. Jay caught my eye, blushed, and gave his order too. Of course, a blush with fur such as his is difficult to discern. It is not so a change in colour, but more so the subtle tinge of heat upon cheeks, and slight nervous rising of the fur, that gives it away.

We ate in silence. Not a cold silence, a warm one. A silence broken by grins and glances; and eyes brushing one another. A silence of twitching ears, and stifled laughs resulting from some small humorous action the other makes, and eyes that smile from ear to ear; eyes that seem to brighten and forget the surrounding dark. I felt his feet touch mine. My feet that were tucked under the chair, as Tom had done. He stifled a laugh. He smiled so infectiously, so invigoratingly, that I couldn't help but smile as well.

Whatever strange and cautious feeling we shared for one another began to link us. Soon we broke the silence with words.

He told me about how he loved flowers. He'd stop out the front of each house he delivered to, to pause for a moment and sniff the garden. I told him about books; books enjoyed by myself and with Tom, and of strolls in the park. He told me about Autumn as a child: of yellow coats and rain and playing in the dead leaves - swiping at them in the air and collapsing into the piles his parents had spent the day arduously forming. Autumn felt warm and loving when he spoke of it.

The hours escaped us, and soon we stood outside in the cold air; facing one another silently - full of things to say but without the conviction to say them. We stuttered goodbyes, nervously swaying in the breeze. We stood toe-to-toe, close enough that our feet touched; close enough to feel the heat of one another, to feel warm breath tickling our noses. His eyes seemed to contain infinite detail from this distance; and then I saw nothing as I closed my eyes and his mouth touched mine. Something washed over and through me. I felt his heart, dance slowly in time with my own, and his fur - prickling with tension - rub against me.

I didn't think of Tom then. I though him later, when a much colder silence gripped me, alone in my bed. What would he think of me?

***

I lived through the following days anxiously. I stopped breathing with a sharp inhale when I saw him, and I felt as though I would fall over when he came close enough to smell him. He smiled, so genuinely, so lovingly - I could not help but do the same. I invited him to my house one afternoon, when he had finished his deliveries. Some part of me implored myself to abandon him - to tell him I could not feel the same; for I knew how he felt, his eyes and smile betrayed him, but I could not, for I knew I loved him too.

We sat in Tom's favourite chair, side by side (almost), my leg over his, our heads lent together. I'd love for us to read a book together; he liked the idea as well. I agonised over the many choices on the shelf. My gaze drifted rebelliously to the top left-hand corner; to Tom and I's book. I grabbed it down, it felt heavy with memories; with love. I sat on the bed and looked at it for a time. I could not help but feel Tom next to me, lovingly gazing over my shoulder.

I opened it, slowly, blowing a thin layer of dust from a long-abandoned relic of another time. Tears swam in my eyes as I recognised the slightly angular, carefully formed lettering of Tom's handwriting.

Love him as much as you loved me.