last night

it's like this: i'm sitting around in pajamas, eating breakfast cereal and idly chatting with friends and strangers via the internet. i read the news and update my facebook, i laugh when chau farts in his sleep. a message appears in my inbox from jake's dad. a question is asked and answered.

and then it's like this: i am shivery, weak, and ill. he has been dead for two weeks and here he has died all over again. a moment later i am composed, because i have to be, and i get on with the business of a normal day. i bake a cake. i shower. i accompany my sister to the library, and then to the tattoo parlor.

the scene is this: we are in the car, she is driving. we're just done laughing about something or another, we're eating ice cream. a moment's silence passes, and then i tell her what i've learned. i'm crying all of a sudden, shocked at how wet my tears are, at how little comfort i've gleaned from two weeks distance, from ice cream and everything. a void opens up and threatens to swallow me, just out of my line of sight, threatens to turn me permanently into one of those thousand-mile-stares weirdos. i sit in the car, too miserable-looking to go in with her. on the way home, we talk about it for a minute more, until something else comes up- and something else always comes up- and we're laughing again.

fast forward: it is three days later and i can't sleep for the need to hear his voice, so i call his voicemail over and over and commit to memory every rasp and inflection of his voice. i watch and rewind and rewatch in my mind: our first meeting, our first fight, our first kiss, our first i-love-you. i sublimate thoughts of him with tedious book reviews and essays on existentialism, both of which lead somehow back to him. i layer three comforters on myself and pretend to be warm and asleep until i am.

the next day: the morning is a blur of coffee and make-up and clothes, and i make it to my meeting on time, early even. i sit in the lobby and read bierce's witty letters, and mid-chuckle i get a flash of memory. i remember the blonde hair on his arms, and running my fingers over it eversolightly and i think- sifting through his ashes won't be the same. his arms and his arm hair don't exist anymore. i sit there with my breath caught in my throat, trying to conceive of the inconceivable until nancy calls me in and i'm all smiles for my picture.

later: i roll up my jeans and walk towards the water's edge. the sky is flawless, the beach is empty, i am peaceful and smiling. and then i step into the water and watch the fine brown sand slide and shift as the water recedes and i think, this sand could be you, will be you, eventually, someday, sooner than it will be me. and then a pelican dives for a fish, and raquel is laughing and telling for the thousandth time the story of my pelican guardian. i'm walking along the shore looking for seashells, i'm laughing when someone falls fully clothed in to the water, i'm face-up on the sand contemplating the vast blueness of the sky. walking along, i notice the heart & arrows & initials someone traced into the damp sand, and i trace yours and i realize they look like the symbol for pi, and i wonder if everyone knows i'm off by myself because i'm thinking of you?

now i wonder, is this how it's always going to be? i'm alive in this moment as you are not, but i'm alive in the past with you as well, and i'm alive in a future without you but always missing you, simultaneously. i look in the mirror and i wonder: is this me, all there is to me, these irises, this skin, this hair? because your arm hair is gone and that means you are gone. your mole i named jose is gone, and that means that you are gone. but my fingers that love(d) your arm-hair are still here, and my lips that kissed your mole are too, but how can they really be if you're gone?

everyone misses the ideals you represented, and i do too, but i also just miss the visible, touchable, actual fact of you, of your existence and your presence. two weeks ago, i had LA because this is where i live, and i had- was acutely aware of, plotted on my internal map- SD because that's where you were. now, i know you're everywhere, but that just means you're nowhere.

i write this down because i can't talk about it, because good, loving, supportive people just don't know what to say, and who am i to inflict such awkwardness and helplessness? they are trying to live their lives, as i am mine. what's weird is that despite myself, i am succeeding.