Dear Friend (December 2010)

I am drifting around in one of the largest cities in the world and I am surrounded by millions of other people. We are all very close here. I sit on the bus and on my left side I feel the cold window glass through my winter coat and on my right side I can sense the heat from the body of someone who has been running to catch the bus. I walk across the river on a busy footbridge and because I love the view from that bridge so much I take a deep breath to take it all in, but what I get is not fresh air, but the taste of a stranger’s breath, someone that breathes out as we pass each other. There are people and smells everywhere: sweat, perfume, spices, unwashed clothes. I surrender to it all.

But you are not here. You are in my thoughts, but you are not here. You are dead. You are in my thoughts, but I am not in yours. And I realize that this might be the most painful thing about my loss: once we were in each other’s thoughts, but now you only exist in my mind and I do not exist in yours.

I can’t accept that you are dead. I miss you so much and my mind constantly makes up these stories where you are alive and we do things together. I tell you what I see in this city, but you do not listen anymore. I keep walking and I do get lost some times, but not enough to disappear.

If you want to lose yourself, then do not go to an isolated hut in a dark forest. No, go to a place with a lot of people: a sweaty dance floor, a crowded bus, a busy street with Christmas shoppers. In that crowd I start to doubt where the smell comes from – is it me or the person next to me? Or whose stomach made that rumbling sound in the cinema?

Suddenly I get a glimpse of you among the millions of other people, but guess what? ... Yes, we have all seen that film. It wasn’t you.