Try something for me. I want you to say her name. I want you to say her name into the empty air and just listen to the echoes swimming upstream through time. I want you to say her name into the darkness and watch all the ghosts swirl into life for just a moment. I know that it hurts. I know that sometimes you can’t get up because the beat of your own sluggish heart sounds like her footsteps. I know that sometimes you can’t fill your lungs with half a good breath because the air tastes too much like her perfume and you can’t bear to let it disappear like unspoken words down your throat. I know that you are afraid to invoke too many ghosts in case they swarm around you and carry you away with them. Or maybe, maybe that’s not what you fear— maybe what you’re really afraid of is how badly you want it to happen, how desperately you wish to disappear like the wisp of memories no one else remembers how hopelessly you wish for the world to fade out in sepia tones so you can pretend it makes sense again. I know that her name is a prayer now. I know that her name is a prayer reserved for the darkest nights ands grayest days when the ghost of her in the corner of your eyes feels more real than anything your fingers can touch in this world now. But child, I want you to say her name and listen to the echoes fading away into silence. I want you to say her name and taste the aftermath in the air. I want you to say her name again and again and again and again until you can say it without a hitch in your breath, without a stutter in your heartbeat. And then, I want you to say it just one more time and say your name right after hers so that you can touch her and exist with her and fade away into silence with her-- at least in sound at least in the chambers of your straining ears the way you wish you had.
learn to say goodbye ( j.p. )
