In the room I was standing, I saw the ghosts of last weekend. A week ago, Laura had brought a friend to check if the coast was clear. Green flag means come in and swim, red flag means there might be a strong current. Seeing no one, she was now shoving a forkful of cake into her friend’s mouth and laughing hysterically. Everybody loved her. I could see the wooden kitchen chairs, table, and tall glass cabinet behind their floating, transparent bodies before they disappeared completely.
Despite Laura’s absence, I can always find her agents, like Dana, spread out equally in my dreams, on the barren landscape of social media, and wandering around the physical world. How thoughtful. As if I needed them to pick up her scent, feel her presence. Her henchmen all have one thing in common: they are all flies stuck on a web next to our skeletons. In contrast to Dana’s crystal blue eyes, my dirty eyes slowly turned to mud. The overhead lights in the kitchen became blurry suns while I wondered why I was always a week late. Many people come before us, many will live after us, but only a few have the privilege of interacting at the same time.
“oh, still a sore subject,” she asked. Her question conveyed mostly confusion, with a hint of a sarcastic high school bully and condescension, “oh honey…” I thought to myself, or maybe I said out loud: What is the difference between someone being dead and you being dead to them?
I reached down and touched the gas burners through their flame on the stove and it didn’t hurt. Perhaps my hands were protected by the water that was rising up above my lungs, the water that made it hard to breathe. Perhaps the burners simply mingled with my immolation.
“She won’t talk to me,” I stated plainly, trying to be strong. I turned and shoved my arm all the way into the half empty case of PBR. I knew where I was, but I didn’t remember the four hour drive there. I was in the city of best friends, wandering ghosts, and damn henchmen.
The rest of the patrons hadn’t noticed this sad interaction, and I sat down at a table of men laughing boisterously. If you’re crying from loss, you can blend into a group of men crying from laughter in the same way you can simply walk outside in the rain. Their laughter reminded me of Chris Farley’s Matt Foley character, and I almost got up and yelled and adjusted my pants. I told the man next to me that two years, for me, was half of a lifetime. To my surprise, he nearly fell backwards out of his chair laughing.
That night, just as I was drifting off to sleep, a german shepherd jumped on top of me. I was asleep enough to be paralyzed. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t scream “GET OFF DIPSHIT!” I waited in that moment, knowing I would be awake soon, with fully functional limbs and the strength of a young man necessary to push this inconsiderate beast off my chest. When I did finally awake, there was no dog, just the stuffed panda bear I sometimes sleep with. The weight was an illusion. The sun had risen, again, even though we do nothing to deserve it.
Written by the Father of Time