I. There has been a death, a sickness, a love affair, a calamity, a journey.
II. You are none the better but you are none the worse.
III. You start missing them, finally, when you are driving home one day.
IV. You made a lot of jokes about this. More than were appropriate - all of you did. It was the best you could do when it happened when everything happened and now you are still laughing at the ghost of things you all said two months ago when it was as though the door would still open.
V. You live in that room now.
VI. You live in that room and it doesn't even smell like him anymore.
VII. You don't feel guilt. You feel guilt about a lot of things but not about this. This was not your fault, this was no one's fault and you know it. You all know it.
VIII. Sometimes you find it very ironic that you are still alive. You wonder if he ever considered, in the six months before, the idea what one step eleven stories up would determine not only the loss but several people's unwillingness to die.
X. The joke you made was that killing yourself is no longer original.
Written by
Steven Muir 20/Transgender Male/Santa Clarita, California