Second night; your place.

Sister,

I wanted to say something about the peace, too. That being surrounded with the things you lived with - breathed in - began & ended up keeping, brings its own sigh of relief or release. It's the closest I can come to you now.

And while in this space, by experiencing it as it is, rather than as I feared/thought/expected it would be (especially what with expectation's treachery), I come to realize/understand/see that all of the pain we're in really only reflects an internal struggle with this shakeless sense of despair & injustice. But rather than against these things we struggle for them, as a way of fighting for our own failed faith/hope/expectation. I don't see how it can be any other way. We show our disappointment & resentment like a young faceless couple wear their hearts on their sleeves. Flaunting it; defiant in the face of what is - simply, and yet so impossibly.

This peace here, with & without you, is the absence of that struggle. For better or for worse, and really just the same.

-L (5/23/11)

First night; your place.

Sweetie-pie,

I'm staying at your place tonight. I intend to stay for the summer, if I can hang. It's so quiet here. Everything holding its breathe, clearly waiting. Awaiting your return to animate the purpose behind the existence of all your belongings, for you to show them why they were chosen to be placed just so. I could describe it as a void; a kind of limbo exists here, accompanied only by the whish-whish-whish of the fountain beneath your finally re-opened window. It's like walking the brink of reality or sanity - and for the life of me (or you) I can't tell which way is down. Rather like it destroyed the deepest secrets of at-core expectation, your crash manifested this limbo in a blink or two of eyes, still looking-on dumbstruck. Suddenly everything here has been locked in, and all of it hangs. Frozen without a trace of cold; water without the thought of wet, yet formed. It's only me, the touch of you on everything, and my missing you, that moves...

And Sierra, of course. I scared her something awful when she tried to lay on your bed. ('Never again!', you'd said.) I'll get her a dog bed tomorrow, if I don't go to my internship first thing. I'm not even sleeping on your bed - it's not that you wouldn't let me or want me to, it's that you oughta be sound asleep beside me. And I can't forget that the last time I slept here, you were. So the couch it is for now.

Tonight I wandered around, utterly distracted without a hope of rational thought to even tempt my mind into believing. I stared at your littlest things on the bookshelf. Read and re-read that post card I sent to you years ago, still on the fridge, addressed "para mi hermana hermosa...amor de mi vida!" Felt like an invader, being here. (Still do so far.) So private you are, and yet everywhere surrounding me are symbols and tokens of everyone you love. You kept us all with you, always. How odd that pieces of ourselves should become our only remnants of you...

-L (5/22/11)