You are sad because the words have become too much, too many, not enough all at once, so we go out for ice cream. As we walk, we talk amongst ourselves, and your giggle, laden with adolescent voice cracks as it is, outdazzles the sunset that’s dripping out into the sky. Inside the shop we take pictures of you in your plaid shirt holding an extraordinarily green lollipop as the light bounces off the displays on the brick walls and enkindles a dull glint on your glasses. Later we sit talking in the dark, and I am so mesmerized by the love I have for you and the others that I forget to eat dinner. We take more pictures of you staring out at the Ferris wheel lights under the moon, we go inside, we banter in the glass elevator, we go to the 19th floor and laugh behind the curtains. I go to bed at midnight overflowing with warmth. It was late for me then.
Eleven months later I sit in the parking lot after school on a pleasant April afternoon. I open my phone to an Instagram post by one of your classmates and it’s as if someone has dropped rocks into my stomach. I take in just enough words to know what’s happened.
“never gonna be the same without you”
“something to make you feel like life was worth living”
“can’t believe you’re gone”
“Don’t go silently.”
Talk of the power of denial does little to prepare you for its reality. There’s no earthly logic that could make this not real, and yet I believe with everything in me that it isn’t. Because it just can’t be. And so I begin to rationalize. A twister prank? Some kind of misunderstanding? I tie myself down to anything that could make you still alive. My mom lets me skip dance rehearsal and makes me mac and cheese. I eat it blankly and let my brain do the gymnastics of deciding I’ve been lied to. Hours later I realize how foolishly flimsy my rationales are and I fall asleep in a pool of my tears, lungs shaky with Saturn on repeat.
It’s been almost three years. You were just fourteen, and now you will always be fourteen. I wish I could turn the soft ache you left inside me into something productive for you but it’s never good enough. So I just listen to other people’s songs and breath in the sea of green around me and think gently of how you’d love it. I lie in the frigid wet grass under the tree-framed stars, losing feeling in my toes, and wonder if you’re looking back down on me. I keep the white feather from the kitchen floor in my pocket until it disappears a week later because it’s a promise you are there. Maybe only in my imagination, but there all the same.