The Weight We Carry

The Christmas lights glowed like dying stars in the silence. Rowan stood before a half-decorated tree holding a box containing their crystal star from Prague. His hands trembled. Each of the ornaments reflected what his life had become, nothing but yesterday’s memories repeating endlessly.

Time had stopped six months ago. There was no tomorrow anymore, just a never ending string of todays he had to endure. The home stayed too quiet. The meals remained too small. The rooms held nothing but what used to be.

The star belonged at the top to crown their spruce. But months later, there were still some tasks he couldn’t complete.

That’s why the yearning found him once again.

It began with Asher’s cologne, faint but unmistakable. The fragrance lingered on their pillows, their scarves, and still hung in the air from countless morning embraces before a long day apart for work. The box grew unbearable in his hands, as if all their lost futures had crashed down at once. His fingers burned from its weight, so he set it down on the table with a thump.

From the doorway to their bedroom, darkness took form.

Two red eyes opened. They weren’t merry like tinsel or bright like ornaments. They held nothing of good cheer and fond memories. Instead, they studied him with a gaze that knew every sleepless night, every text he missed, every half-finished sentence that haunted these quiet rooms.

Then the creature emerged. It moved as Asher moved. It stood as Asher stood. It tilted its head in that questioning way Asher always had. The tree lights dimmed, but flickered in step with his quickening heartbeat.

“Ash?” The name broke in his throat, releasing everything else in his heart into that one syllable: I miss you. I need you. I don’t know how to be alone.

The entity didn’t respond. But one by one, it showed him their lost moments. Morning coffee shared in comfortable silence. Lazy Sunday crosswords. The warmth of another heart beating beside his own. And how on one Saturday morning, when Asher attempted French toast, he filled their kitchen with the scent of burnt butter and his theatrical apologies. But he saved one piece, perfectly golden, just for Rowan. “Because you deserve the best,” he said, and meant it completely. Then came the deeper wounds. Asher’s laugh. Asher’s touch. Asher’s future. Moving forward felt like leaving these moments behind, like leaving him behind.

Something wasn’t right. The eyes burned too red, too hungry, too eternal. This thing wearing darkness for flesh wasn’t his Asher. This was yearning in its purest form, ancient and endless. It lived in every mother’s tears for lost children, in every lover’s ache for an absent touch. It didn’t just feed on longing; it cultivated it, like a gardener tending poisonous blooms. And now it was harvesting Rowan’s memories, each cherished moment making its red eyes grow brighter.

“You’re not him,” Rowan whispered.

The creature stretched out what might have been a hand. Each eye pulsed as it showed him his choices. It could give him an echo. A shadow. An almost-Asher that would nearly fool his heart.

Through the glow, Rowan studied the perfect echo before him. And in that stillness, he understood what he’d been doing these past months. Each memory he’d kept had become a cage, trapping not just his grief but his love itself. He’d tried to keep everything exactly as it was, believing that’s what love demanded.

The world outside these walls hadn’t stopped turning. Spring would come again, bringing new flowers he’d never admire with Asher over morning coffee. Songs would play on the radio that Asher would never hear. Friends would share jokes that would never make him laugh. For months, each of these moments felt like betrayals. As if moving forward meant letting go of everything they’d shared.

But love was never meant to be a statue, perfect and cold and unchanging. Genuine love breathed. It grew. It transformed. New flowers could bloom alongside cherished memories. Fresh coffee could be poured in old mugs. Different joys could live in familiar spaces.

Their story didn’t have to end; it just had to change shape. And healing didn’t mean stopping the love; it meant letting it change. Like rivers carving new paths after storms, like forests growing different but stronger after fire. And wasn’t this what Asher had loved most about him? His ability to find joy, even in the hardest moments?

The red eyes continued to glow.

“I can’t keep you anymore,” Rowan’s voice grew stronger. “I can’t live in almosts anymore. Even perfect echoes are still just echoes.”

The entity’s form shook, its red eyes flaring with desperate hunger. No one had ever denied its promise of forever-almost-having.

“No,” he said, his voice steady now. “I choose joy.”

The entity’s form trembled. For the first time in its existence, its red eyes flickered with uncertainty. Then it shattered, not like glass or ice, but like a chain breaking under its own tension.

The Christmas lights steadied into gentle flame, warming the room. The crimson bulbs that had reflected his endless todays now promised something different. Something more.

When he returned to the box on the coffee table, the star from Prague waited in its tissue paper nest. He lifted it, expecting the familiar weight of six months’ grief. Instead, it rose easily in his hands, light as a memory meant for carrying forward.

That night, the star found its place. Not on their tree anymore — on his. The lights caught the crystal edges, throwing prisms across walls that had held too many shadows. Each ornament below it glowed differently now, no longer dying stars but constellations guiding home.

He stood back, watching the lights pulse with the rhythm of his heart. A steady beat. A forward march. No longer the frantic tempo of yearning or the slow dirge of grief. For in choosing to release the sweet poison of endless yearning, to step into the uncertainty of healing, he had found something he thought impossible.

He had found tomorrow.