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The points being made never stuck. I couldn’t synthesize this knowledge, but even worse, I couldn’t even regurgitate it to at least convince myself I knew something about life, or death, or meaning. Something inherent. Something irreducible. With every moment the floor shifted under my feet. The world was pressed against my nose, too close to see. I had no story to follow. My favorite character was gone.
Olivia and Terrence offered their spare bedroom. Your friends called daily. The logic was that I shouldn’t be alone the week after your burial. They say tragedies like this bring people together. They’re right. And it’s suffocating.
In the movies, if every guy in an indie romance wanted a manic pixie dream girl, then you were my Sarah Connor girl. Strong jawed, road rager, hell-bent on achieving your goals, who also believed people could be good if you were patient with them: “Come with me if you want to live and let live.”
It was the millennial version of those cultures that exhumed a dead person’s corpse and paraded it through the streets, dressing it in new outfits, posing with it for photos. I wanted to forge something big enough to kill the whole world.
The first couple times people told me you had visited them and told them you found peace, I smiled and said something about how reassuring that was, but inside I was ripping the wallpaper off my skull.
He smiled the way a drop of oil separates in a hot pan. “Claim your seat at the banquet.”
I could see it in the way they turned to each other and shared a tense look like this was going to be a waste of time. What choice did they have? They were men with jobs and bills, and wedding bands, their phones probably filled with photos of their kids.
