Month: February 2015

Letters to Anons: No.1

| MLE

I met you probably four or five times during the brief time we were both alive.
So few meetings– a loose handful, small enough to slip between my fingers and be trodden beneath my feet over years and years as I grew up and forgot. But now and again, I stumble on something and kick up the dust, gritty in my teeth and eyes and on my skin and it insists upon itself until I brush it away,
and there you are.
You’ve not gone anywhere.
It still happened.

I’m not sure why I’ve only begun thinking about it now, turning the reality of your life over and over in my mind. I didn’t know you, not really.
I was only very small, see, and I don’t remember your face, your voice. But I remember your presence, even in those few times meeting you. And your absence is painfully large in so many lives, even now, seventeen years later. I know your birthday, I learned it by complete coincidence when I told my mother that my favorite date is October fifteenth, because of its actual place in time and because of its aesthetic appeal. I know that your son is the spitting image of you at his age. I can see bits of you in my mother’s face, in my uncle’s face, in my brother’s face, in my cousins’ faces. I can see the laughter you gave our family in your wife’s face, even under years and lines of pain.
I feel you all the time, when we all go into the woods together, when we laugh together, when your name is briefly mentioned and everyone’s face changes. I don’t feel that I’m entitled to any sort of loss, after all, how could I be? Our lives barely crossed. But I do grieve you, every now and again. When I stumble. And see you there in the dust.