Pick any, and it will bear teeth, marks of the year you survived and he did not, the way fate pinched you into living each bright morning.

Pick any, and you will remember that the story always ends the same, that last glimpse of him, his shoulders and his back, that body in the garden.

Pick any, and you will envy the women, what their lives became, that bed full each night, a father’s calm hands as he holds a child, someone’s laughter over breakfast.

Pick any and you will remember folding his clothes, pick any and there is still a box in the closet where they take up space, pick any and you will remember meeting him, the chess board on the table, the hot coffee, the clean, beautiful line of his jaw.

Pick any, and even when you sleep next to a man you want to love you will still remember him, how loving him had been like drowning.

The way that your lungs have wanted something more than air.