Lost at sea

prompt: when I awoke the next morning

   When I awoke the next morning I lay there watching the dust motes dance lazily in the sunlight  streaming through the half opened shades.
   My eyes move slowly over the blue t-shirt laying in a puddle beside the bed, before I start to drift back to sleep.
For those first few moments I feel okay - maybe even good - though worn out for reasons that flutter somewhere out of reach, on the edges of my mind.
Peter will wear that t-shirt even if it's all wrinkled I think.
It is then that my eyes fly open with a violent start, zeroing in on the faded blue cotton.
Reality comes crashing in- unavoidably apparent - as if it were written into the shirt's fibres.
He is gone.
Peter is gone but his faded blue t-shirt, worn almost to shreds, remains.
A piece of clothing so ratty and stained that I tried countless times to get rid of it. He called it "vintage" and I called it "disgusting".
It lays there on the floor, shapeless, without the large and muscular frame to fill it.
It still smells faintly of him,  comforting and familiar.
That smell drives me to my knees as I hold to my face and let it soak up my tears for hours until finally exhaustion claims me.
This is how I spend almost every night and morning for months after Peter's death.
Forgetting or trying to forget and then remembering over and over again that Peter is lost to me forever.
I cling to his shirt like it is a life preserver, and I am lost at sea.