An (edited) old piece from years ago, published on another site with the title six weeks on. I lost a family friend who lost a 5 million pound house and there was a lot going on in my then fifteen-year-old mind.
My eyes are dry but I still get teary-eyed sometimes like when I write about you because you plus me was one plus one equals two and we were such a pair, ages eighty and eight and do you remember the days? The weeks, the months, the years, two visits in six years I’m sorry I should’ve seen you one last time. You mattered to me and you always will but now you have no more mass. I sing happy songs to quiet the anger in my gut eat candy bars to stifle the bitterness in my heart there is so much emptiness within me that I have gained weight. Weight – you will never have weight again although you will always be infinite pounds heavy in my heavy heart, infinite pounds like 5 million pounds, the house is five million pounds, how on earth should I save it when my age is only five times three? How do I fight for what you believed for the people you loved when you were a soldier and I am a student and you were a Major but I am a minor and I cannot do a pull-up much less lift a sword? But I’m trying the sword is heavy but I’m trying maybe if I pull it out of this rock I can make you king. Or maybe Excalibur is a little too rooted in the earth maybe you need Mjölnir maybe if I find a way to lift it from the ground you can rule Asgard and we will live forever.
Hammer or sword I will sharpen the edges with every email I send I will do my best to make sure you will not be forgotten make sure I will never regret another thing I say in the same sentence as your name – your name I will never again say your name sitting face to face with you in your sitting room I should have come. I should have known I didn’t know why didn’t you write me the question really is why didn’t I ask because I could’ve and you couldn’t have I’m sorry if I ever sounded like I was blaming you believe me I have always been on your side.
The only way to console myself now is to persuade myself that you’re not dead. That the universe is a video game and we all have more than one life, that you are gone but not really gone, just in another map, playing another game, maybe under another username. That one day I will see you again, and I will recognise you with your new avatar. I pray that you will recognise me too. That you will want to. Because I’m so afraid that you hate me for not being there. That your name is all I can think about but you don’t even want to let mine cross your mind.
Six weeks on and the rest of my life seems like an eternity but eternities are not as infinite as 5 million pounds so let’s get started on that first.
“But the thing about remembering is that you don’t forget.” ― Tim O’Brien, The Things They Carried
efflorescence 