Post-it Obituary

I’m losing you. I’ve already lost you. You are still here with me.

How can all three be happening at once?

I saw you today for the first time in six months since our first and last goodbye. Before then, it was always see you later. I guess it was inevitable that we would make eye contact once again, even after the funeral I held for you in my head following our last walk together. That’s all we shared just now. Eye contact and a smile. I’ve never smiled at or seen a smile from a ghost but I know at least one side of that exchange was genuine and filled with reminiscent memories of friendship. I don’t know what to do now. I’ve been playing with the possibility of holding a séance through my phone ever since, but I’ve heard it said that it’s better to let the dead rest.

I buried you in a book as I constructed its pages like an abstract prison in the dead of winter when my computer hardly worked from the cold. I said goodbye to most of my immaturity while burning the grave by the time summer hit and my computer hardly worked from the heat. I said hello to new insecurities and eventually lost the lesson you had taught me in too much abstract obscurity.

I miss you, but not every day. I mourn our broken connection, but only when I think of it.

I always forget the literal defining moments of my life birthed from silence in your presence, absorbed and then vanished.

It’s like a movie without credits or a painting with no color. You almost completely disappeared before I stopped to think of giving you mention. I owe you a lot, but now my whispered thanks only serve to disperse the smoke rising from your grave. I burned the book to try and move past the uncertainty but I inhaled its vapor and it still lives inside of me. You still live inside of me and without me and still somehow dead but we drag our dead on leashes and still somehow you are here and there and everywhere that I am not and we are still alive. Mostly thanks to you, even though I spent a lot of time pushing you to the side. Now that I need you again in the middle of whatever this is, I can’t reach you.

We decided it’s best to move on, say our first and last goodbye that still stands true to the test of time. I miss the way it was, what it should’ve been, and also what it wasn’t. I don’t know the way to get back what was lost. I’ve heard it said that it’s better to let the dead rest.

November 27th, 2017