supplicium post mortem

The dreams don’t stop. Neither does the hope that he’ll be upstairs when I come in the door, that I’ll hear his footsteps clumping along the floorboards and down the spiral stairs. It will be such a relief, as it always is when he comes home. Like stepping into air conditioning from a brutal, New York summer.

People don’t talk about him as much as they used to. Everyone else seems to have repaired the colossal tear in the matrix that his disappearance caused. His job has been filled. It is no longer tasteful to think on him.

I cannot tell you… I cannot tell you—anything. I know…I know. Everyone has part of their life which is now in the past. I am no different from any single person still walking this planet. I don’t like the word unfair. But how come I have to keep living when he didn’t?

The card I gave him on our last anniversary is still in the bedside drawer that used to be his, its message a kind of steganography:

xoxoxo me

h&l&nt & tc4mh, l&h ohbb uhc, h-h, & ont4cdm b/c sagg.

I asked him if he understood, and he read the whole thing confidently aloud: hugs and love and nice things, and the cane for marky, long and hard on his bare bottom, ha-ha, and only nice things for casey because she’s a good girl.

There is no one to talk to this way anymore. Even the dogs don’t get it.

God, help me.

This really was a bumper crop for 3F. Don’t know if it is fall industriousness or the thrill of a hard challenge, but these writers deserve a big hand (won’t say what kind or where) or at the very least nice comments on their blogs. Read on, Macduff!

• Rafi
• Sandy
• Abby
• Nettagyrl
• PapaTomLA