The last time I saw you before you turned into ashes, you didn\u2019t know we\u2019d never meet again in the known world, or perhaps you knew and didn\u2019t want to tell me, you let me go with the promise of seeing each other in the morning, and I can\u2019t know if you meant it the way I meant it, tomorrow you\u2019ll turn into ashes, and I\u2019m not a poet, so I mean this literally, for tomorrow I\u2019ll only wave from afar, before they take away what\u2019s left of you and turn it into dust, but I\u2019ll keep thinking we\u2019ll meet again, that you\u2019ll come back.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I promised we\u2019d meet again in the morning and you nodded, and I kept my part of the promise, and you kind of kept yours, but not in the way friends do, it was sneaky of you to only leave your body behind, her spirit is in a better place now, they said, and I believed them, death is all about magical thinking, and it\u2019s been nothing but magic since that moment, everything happens for a reason, I find meaning in everything, I pretend it totally makes sense, you left just right on time, before you had a chance to fade, you wanted to be young for as long as possible and you did well, and you ran away to better places, where old is not an option.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d write about the last time I saw you, but even if I did, I still wouldn\u2019t know that was the last time I saw you, because you can\u2019t know when it\u2019s the last time you see anything or anyone, but there\u2019s always a last time for everything and everyone, and I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d look for you in photo albums, in museums of people gone, and I\u2019d realize I forgot to do a backup, I\u2019m not good at backups, I don\u2019t have a backup plan for life after you, I never made a backup plan and it shows.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d miss who I was before the last time I saw you, that I\u2019d only bear to watch disaster movies for days, with asteroids falling onto the earth, with floods destroying the world, because they\u2019d feel comforting, not only my world would end, a pitiful revenge against life going on without you, and also in them we all go down together, not one by one, we don\u2019t lose each other on the way, for hell is losing people, and we cling to hell, because we don\u2019t know heaven yet.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d think of people running to places, people already gone, going, or about to go, about people leaving countries, homes, lives, for people are not stuck, and when they see an open door, they have to move forward, it\u2019s ancient wisdom that everything flows, and people run to be ahead of time, they run to places, when in fact they\u2019re running from places, from despair, pain and time, and they hope places are better, and there are other people holding them back, friends, family, doctors, pulling them back, aspiring catchers in the rye, but in an absurd, sisyphian way, who may win battles, knowing the game is rigged and the war will be lost, that people will always keep on running, and I think I\u2019m getting old, I should be running faster too, I should hurry to do all things I haven\u2019t done and to go to places I haven\u2019t yet been to, I should be running in midlife crisis panic, when all I do is stay still, while other people run to places.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d spend the next few days clinging to magical thinking and that I\u2019d talk irrational, that I\u2019d think irrational, write in run-on sentences, write irrational, because irrational is all I\u2019ve got, because rational is too much and I can\u2019t handle it, that I\u2019d talk about spirits and heaven, for I think magical, I think you left this place for a better one, and I stayed here, like people do when other people leave. We go back to living. We go back to frantically running to places, like time is running out, because it is. We go back to small, structured sentences. We cling to life, to magic, to love. And even if there is a heaven, we cling to this life, this place where we lose people, and we keep running, because that\u2019s all we\u2019ve got and we can\u2019t know yet what heaven looks like.<\/p>\n
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The last time I saw you, I didn\u2019t know I\u2019d miss who I was before the last time I saw you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19503,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[760],"tags":[791,316],"class_list":["post-18796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-creative-nonfiction","tag-essay-2","tag-grief","writer-mileva-anastasiadou"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19504,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18796\/revisions\/19504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}