The world is burning outside my window. Hope and optimism have dwindled. People keep driving like shit; accidents happen once or twice a day. They keep passing up other drivers illegally, only to be at the same stoplight with the driver they passed. Their stupid smirk never changes. I don’t get it. How did they win? They’re at the same stoplight. People are still going to places. They crowd grocery stores; they buy their weekly necessities or wait in ridiculously long lines for shiny cardboard. Fast-food drive-thrus are filled with starving people rushing to consume frozen preservatives. Gas prices keep rising, but that’s what they voted for, yet, they keep feeding their grand machines of plastic and steel. That’s how you get from Point A to Point whatever the fuck. People are eating out, still; they don’t blink at the restaurants that used to have a “BOGO” offer every other day, or the price of seafood that has tripled in three years, and I don’t know why. It’s not even fresh. Neighbors are still watering their lawns with no care in the world about their utility bill. They tend their gardens and kill the weeds, only for them to sprout again in a few months. The sun keeps shining its stupid, hot rays of light. The clouds, if there are any, drift with lazy motivation. The world has kept spinning; people keep on living. Yet, I can’t move on from the day everything changed. The day you were taken is my home, whether I want it to be or not. There is no door. The windows are gone. There is no escaping. There is no pushing it out; it’s an immovable piece of our history. I can drum out the noise with poetry and writing, but I can never fill the silence of the empty chair at our table. Everyone has moved on and it feels unfair. It’s not. I keep digging and digging, searching for a way out, and the deeper I go, the less light I see. You’re in my head. In my dreams. I see you everywhere I go. I love it and I hate it because I love you that much, but I can’t feel you here. I can hear your laugh and the highs and lows of your voice; they’re still fresh, but I don’t know how long that will hold. I have videos just in case. I hope it doesn’t come to it, even if I can’t control that. Why did you have to go? Why? The one-trillion-dollar question, and even if it was answered, I wouldn’t take the money. Nothing is worth more than having you back. I just wanted to grow old together—all of us, all six of us, and to look back at our lives and take in how we’ve grown. That future exists somewhere else, in some other timeline where none of this happened. The day we buried you, we each buried a part of ourselves, too. Something we’ll never get back. But I’m glad—to an extent—that whatever we left with you will stay with you wherever you’ve gone, always with you. And just because I can’t feel you, embrace you, see you, or hear you, doesn’t mean shit. Of course it does, but my love for you will never fade, waver, or break. I long to see you and I know I will, no matter how often my beliefs change, I will be there with you. Someday. Because the thought of you alone makes me sick and brings sadness and saltiness to my face. You were never meant to be alone, and that God be my witness that I won’t leave you alone for too long. But, if you feel up to it, stop by anytime, anytime at all. My dreams will stay open for you, even if they bring me very short bursts of happiness, and long stretches of sadness.
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