Dia de los Muertos

A haunting letter in a form of poetic prose, to commemorate all the selves we lost.

Day of the Dead

Fransivan MacKenzie

There are no marigolds or carnations, but box of napkins await on the table as the percolator gurgles. The clock sings a dreaded anthem and your heart can't help but beat along, dumbstruck. The sunlight pours through the window �" scalpel-sharp one moment, soft the next. You grip the pen. The world before you is a flickering candle.

I suppose that now, you expect that you have all the answers in the world. For why things happened the way they did. I still see you, at times, etching question marks on the mist your breath makes in the bathroom mirror �" the only one your father hasn't yet shattered. There are habits you can't outgrow. There are ghosts you can't exorcise no matter how many gods you clasp your hands for. There are hurts you can't make a decent poem out of �" not because you're not a good poet, but because you're too good to be drenching a paper in hateful blocks alone. I still read the odes you scribble after your scars. I still hear you raising queries desperately, as if scrambling the attic of your brain to find the keys to a rusty vault. 

It's okay, though. You are no longer alone, struggling through every November first and every dawn that you can't find the grace to let in your life. Grief doesn't have a timeline. You've lost so much, so young. Some of them you may get back, most of them you won't. And you have to be at peace with that.

And if you still haven't, we'll find peace in that, too. I'll hold your hand through the waiting. We can visit your graves and rewrite the epitaphs as much as you want to. Until you're ready to wash the blood off your hands, know this: I forgive you for losing all your leaves when you did. I forgive you for all your descents. I forgive you for collapsing more often that you thought you should. 

I forgive you.

And as I have been here all those times you've fallen, I'll be here to wait and watch you bloom.