Dear Evan Hansen

by Val Emmich

Better to burn out, right, than to fade away?

Burning is the right way to paint it. You feel yourself getting so hot, day after day. Hotter and hotter. It gets to be too much. Even for stars. At some point they fizzle out or explode. Cease to be. But if you’re looking up at the sky, you don’t see it that way. You think all those stars are still there. Some aren’t. Some are already gone. Long gone. I guess, now, so am I.

There are a million and ten things from the subatomic to the cosmic that can rattle my nerves on a daily basis, and one of those things is my initials. M.E.H. Like the word: meh.

Meh is pure indifference. Take it or leave it. Doesn’t matter. No one cares.

then just as you’re getting the hang of it, you realize that even if you drive flawlessly, you have to trust that everyone else on the road will do the same. But they don’t. It’s chaos out there.

There I go again, overestimating my importance. How quickly I forget meh-self.

“That’s what happens when people leave, I think. When they’re gone, you don’t have to be reminded of all the bad things. They can just stay the way you want them forever. Perfect.”

I had to die for them to notice I was ever alive.

How do you tell the sex of a chromosome? Pull down its genes.