What a difference a year makes. Has been one thing on my mind, as well as (repeatedly), how worth it it would all have been, you know? All the good things that got missed.
And couldn't you have had a day like this? Just a brilliant time in the Sun? A few hours of less atrocity, where shitty parents and youthful insecurities needn't have mattered?
Obviously this isn't the way life works.
You need anything from the store? The simple act of grabbing a sugary, unhealthy Coke for somebody you barely know. How once you might've liked hanging out in a tattoo shop with laidback music. Wasting time when there's some left to waste.
It hits me you have no more time. That the hours I squander here begrudgingly are wealth. That we could do it faster, but the simple act of doing it is nothing short of a miracle itself.
I think of all the kids sitting in the pew ahead of me, your classmates presumably. The lives they went on to have, the frustration that's inescapable for artists.
I think about you more than I would like, but feel paradoxically you at the same time slipping. Once, it will have been a year, and it'll be like you hardly ever existed.
A public worker asked me how your mom's handling it recently. But that's only because the thing (unspeakable) is still fresh. It won't forever.
Already, you have become last year's tragedy, and the absence of you hasn't kept good days from happening.
I think about the brilliant day that was yesterday. How the Sun felt on my face. Warm bellies. Food in the ant-ridden grass. Playfulness and standing on my shoulders. It's stupid to ask, but wouldn't that have been worth staying for?
Gone's gone. Not much you can do. I'm struck often by all the brilliant things. Not for nothing one of my favorite plays, and I think I may go see it again when I can. Days in the sun like yesterday's would definitely be on my list.
Sometimes good things happen and you wonder how you could even deserve them. Maybe you would've known something about that, eh?
This is all to say things lately have felt to me like floating. The goodness of being. Life occasionally going your way. Making space. What a piece of luck to have arrived at the point in my life where it goes like this. I try as I go not to become oblivious of that. Take things for granted.
You know?
It's a warm day. My appointment is starting. Life...goes on.
