Death and poetry

"I'm assuming you're dead then?"

The words came out with practised insouciance, just as planned. There wasn't much point getting upset about it, after all. It wasn't like there was much I could have done, being on the wrong side of the planet and everything.

He said nothing. It seemed sort of rude to force the issue, so I just stood there, looking down at the waterfall, waiting for him to volunteer something. Eventually I got sick of waiting.
"So, any post-mortem words of wisdom?" I prompted. "Come to tell me to repent of my sins, that sort of thing?"
He shrugged.
"Figured it was about time I saw the world," he said.

I didn't know what to say to that, and he didn't seem in any hurry to add anything, so we just stood in silence, watching the kids playing in the park far below us, listening to the water on its way down. An old woman walking her dog stopped to look up at us, and I wondered if she even saw him standing there beside me. I could feel his eyes on me, but I didn't want to meet them. After a while I realised I was crying.

"What's up, Lib?" I heard him ask, as casual as if we were sat in a pub back home, or lying out in a park in some village somewhere, falling asleep in the sun.
"Ah, nothing," I said. "Just the sun in my eyes".
I wiped a hand across my face.
"So, how's the wife?" I asked, as offhandedly as I could manage.
"Coping with it surprisingly well," he replied, "Though that isn't much of a surprise, I suppose. She's got the boy to keep her company after all".
"And how do you think he feels about it?"
"Ah, he'll be ok," he replied, "He's a smart kid. And tough, like his mum. They'll be fine".

I shrugged. It wasn't really my place to say anything, so I scrabbled for something to change the subject.
"So... what did you do in the end? Mazzies?"
It felt sort of rude to ask, but I wasn't in the mood to let him off too lightly.
"Mazzies are a crap way to go," he said, "Especially when me and the missus had enough stuff on prescription between us to open our own pharmacy. Nah, I guess I did a bit of a Heath Ledger in the end: mix this with that and that and a bottle of vodka and see if you wake up in the morning".
I laughed.
"Sounds like some of my weekends," I said.
"Yeah, something like that," he replied.

I looked up and met his eyes for the first time, and I saw he was smiling, but not at me exactly: more like through me, past me, at something I couldn't see.
"Sorry," he said, guessing what I was thinking. "Been having trouble focusing".
"Well that's not really surprising, is it?" I said. I forced a smile but my eyes stung again. When I reached out to touch his hand it was cold, dry.
"You couldn't have just... waited?" I asked, "I mean, I was going to come back, I only have a few more months left out here, I..."
I trailed off, seeing the look on his face.
"This isn't about you," is all he said. But it was enough to put me in my place.
"Yeah, you're right," I said after a while. "I'm sorry".

I looked up at him again, and this time when he smiled I smiled back.
"I am never gonna forgive you for this," I told him, but I flung my arms around him all the same and hugged him as tight as I could, trying not to notice the fact that I couldn't feel him breathing.
"I'll miss you, you know," I said as I pulled away.
"Me too," he said. Then he turned to go.
I watched him walk away into the trees until I couldn't see him any more. Then slowly I made my way down the steps beside the waterfall, got on my bike and headed home.

Back in my apartment I lay down and stretched out in the pool of sunlight spilling through my window, staring up at the sky and feeling the warmth on my skin. I closed my eyes and just drifted for a while, seeing red through my eyelids, listening to a song in my head.

"If you have to go, don't say goodbye..."

I must have slept: when I opened my eyes again the sun was setting. I watched it bleed out over the rooftops through the branches of the cherry tree outside my window, then I knocked back the rest of the whiskey and sang myself to sleep in earnest.

Mr Nobody called at midnight. I wasn't too surprised: just more ghosts on the line. I even felt like maybe I should talk to him this time, but as usual he didn't give me time to pick up the phone: just enough to kickstart the paranoia. I lay there listening to every tiny noise in the dark, feeling the bottom drop out of everything, his face in my head, not wanting to move to turn on the light.

"Your picture out of time
I've taken in my mind
Shadows kept alive..."

Somehow I slipped in and out of sleep anyway, losing the plot and then finding it again with a start, wide awake at 4a.m. with the cold conviction that I was waiting for something. Something was coming, to make sense of it all. I felt a pressure in my head, like something was growing inside me, stretching out its wings, getting ready to fly. And when, caught offguard by a beautiful dawn peeking in through the window I thought of all the people I couldn't share this with and felt my heart hurting, I wondered briefly if I was going to die too.

But it wasn't death. Just poetry. Different kanji, you know.

"Long horses we are born
Creatures more than torn
Mourning our way home..."