They've se...

            They've set her photo on the table, and I can't help but feel the weight of her gaze settle on me. Like she's accusing me for being unmoved. I think of the last time I saw her. It was summer and the ground had a frantic energy, as if we'd all abandoned our shoes and started rubbing our socks in the carpet all at once. She acted as a lightning rod, gathering other's static energy and lashing out with it. But she didn't take mine. I kept my distance, unsure of her and disliking her behavior. When the crash finally came, there were reprimands. False but seemingly necessary hugs. When it was finished, I passed her outside of the bookstore. I was carrying the evidence of my entrepreneurial failure in my tin box, and we made eye contact. I spoke to her and gave her a book. With those eyes staring at me today, I can't help but wonder if my book was in her apartment when they found her. They say that the she'd been lying there for several days. That some friends, worried, finally came over and demanded that her door be opened. I wonder if it smelled like death or just like her. If they knew immediately.            Friends of mine worshipped her. They held on to her words like dripping ice cream, unable to hold on to their lingering flavor. Empty calories with no substance. But maybe there was. Something under the surface I couldn't, or refused to, see. I stare back at her eyes and know that there is now. That no matter her stance and words and followers in this life, now she does know something secret. Something mystical. I imagine her on the other side with her tight locks and soft, whispering voice. The sensuous way she said 'fuck' and her righteous outrage. But always in that soft voice, even when the words were hard enough to peel asphalt or rip nails from girders. I look at her freckles, trying to break away from her frozen gaze. How I loved her freckles. The comfort they brought when I could no longer stand what was happening around me. There were always the freckles, dark patches spread like the wings of a day moth. How I could disappear into them and find peace. Take her serious words less seriously.            When someone asks me if I've heard, I tell them I have, trying to fight the urge of conspiracy in my voice. That snarky tone that knowledge sometimes brings. The secret joy of already accessed new information. I try not to say much else, not wanting to betray my true feelings for her. Not wanting to impose my own reaction upon another. To let them have their own grief. But what I want to say is that I don't like her any more or less now just because she is dead. I don't tell them how much I loved her freckles, or how much anger she brought out in me.  I don't share my visions of her sipping coffee down her whisper soft voice and how, now that she is no longer accessible to me, I yearn her secrets.