Funerals mean something to everyone,
Even those without loss, without grief, without hurt,
without missing people,

without missing people.

The indiscernible presence of nothing is still something, speaking somehow because sometimes it is the absence of everything that keynotes a person,
a gap left waiting to be filled

a piece you thought didn't yet contribute to the endless, cascading broken parts you've come to familiarise yourself with.

I thought I knew what it meant, with each passing person who has let me down, with each scar that's been left with me, with each door and wound left open or closed

But I didn't
You don't know

You'll never know until it's here, and even then the only truth you have to keep is knowing the infinite beating repetitions of beginning to end, start to finish to start again.

To meet that ever rising glass ceiling is to know humanity, to live it every single day,

To attend, to run from, to face with your ugliest moments

The funerals of everything you thought you knew ringing at your feet

So sometimes I'd like to ask silently,
Would you attend mine?
When I leave this sliver of earth only seen by hands and eyes,
the questions follow me just like all their voices do

Would you meet me again?

I keep wandering, wondering

Will there be wild grasses that grow after me?
Will my loved ones love me even when I'm gone?
When the lights are no longer left on,

When all that's left behind is a memory of things they used to think they knew,

When the candles blow out and all that's left is absence and the mumbling loudness of nothing drowning itself out in darkness

When the words I speak end and become only words I've spoken

Understanding I'll never be able to explain to them in human terms again what it means for me to be here still