She’s dead.
I wake up in the middle of the night and see her standing over me. Everything about her is cold. Her eyes, her tone, her soul.
I am frozen. My voice is stuck in my throat. I don’t know whether to close my eyes or to cherish the moment. Despite panic, I fall back into nightmares.
In the nightmares she is warm. She is smiling. She has plans. She laughs. It feels like I am awake but I am not. We are talking about what we’ll do, and as I am looking at her face - a face from many years ago, a lifetime ago - a whisper trickles in. The whisper is a memory, the invisible whisper is flooding the room, and as it inches up my legs she is smiling and I am smiling and my socks are wet my jeans my shirt sleeves and she is looking at me and the whisper is my voice saying
“She is dead.”
And then her smiling face is gone, the whisper is replaced by sobs, and the noise wakes me up. The sun hasn’t come. The room is dark. I miss her. I tell the whisper not to remind me, next time I want to see her smiling a little longer. I want to live in the time that will never come, I want to greet her ghost and make new memories around the person she used to be. There’s so many things I need to know, need to ask. Next time I want to tell her…
…but, she’s dead.














