In a world of perfect utility, we, too, will be forced to vanish. “You’re sure this is a good idea?” She asks herself; she asks the dead man. The membrane between the two is thin. She knows she’ll never see him again in this or any life to come. Yet she sees him wherever she looks. That’s life; the dead keep the living alive. Every other night she asks her missing friend for words and phrases. For courage. For enough forbearance to keep from pitching her notes into the wood-burning stove. Now the asking is done.
