DMs from the dead

You died two years ago. Some days I still write to you, but I know you died two years ago. Otherwise, we really fucked up by burying you.

To this day, every airplane I see, late at night while I chainsmoke and pray to a god I didn’t believe in even before you were taken from me, every airplane is you making good on your promise to see me soon, but it’s not because you died two years ago and I know this, because I put trinkets and joy and hope into your coffin before they sealed it and when I touched your hands they were so cold.

You died two years ago and I know this because that last message from you, that just said I’m hurt. I love you, that’s the last thing you said to anyone and you never saw my response but I like to think you knew I love you, too.

You died two years ago and I know this because every moment of those two years has been claustrophobic in its emptiness, and sometimes I’ve been jealous of how you got to just close your eyes and you’ll never have to see the absolute devastation you left behind when you didn’t call 911.

For the first ten days, I hoped it was just a terrible prank, that your flight would land on April first and you would walk in and I would cry and be so angry that you put me through this, but of course I could never have stayed angry at you, not if you’d come back from the dead just to see me. I clung to that wish so strongly, I even started to believe it; I even wore mascara that day, so I would look nice when you came back.

But you didn’t come back, because you died two years ago and I know this because a part of me died that day as well. I know you are dead because I feel your absence in rooms you never even entered in life. I know you are dead because the void you left in my world is disproportionate to the time you were in it, and on some days I feel justified in feeling your death so deeply and on others I feel guilty because what’s one year of our lives, really, and am I co-opting grief that isn’t mine to claim?

You died two years ago and I know this because I watched them tamp down the soil over your coffin and drank nips of Patron and Hennessy with your sister even though it felt weird to do since it was drinking that made you leave us behind, and your sister-in-law told me she liked my dress and my voice barely came out when I told her it was supposed to be my wedding dress and I’d just dyed it black.

You died two years ago and I know this because in those two years I have sent you thousands of messages, all delivered, all unread. Every day, I open our chat, hoping to see that green bubble, hoping it’s been a bad dream, and instead I see a wall of one-directional text, all of the times I got news, good or bad, and you were the only one I wanted to tell, all of the times I saw a stupid Golden Girls meme and thought of you, all of the little inside jokes that I barely remember until I do. When I landed the dream job, you didn’t read my texts. When I found out that my body had decided my son couldn’t have siblings, my messages went unanswered. When Killer Mike both swept and got arrested at the Grammys, and I realized you would never hear that album, that stupid green dot still didn’t come up.

And as hurtful as it is that you just stopped reading my messages one day, it makes sense, because you died two years ago and I know that the dead can’t text.

So that day two weeks ago, when I opened our chat to tell you my dog had died and how if I believed in an afterlife I’d ask you to look after her, I knew you were dead, because you died two years ago, and I knew my message would go unread and unanswered, because the dead can’t text. Except that it didn’t.

I hate to admit it, especially to you, but for a moment when I saw that green bubble, I believed it might be you. Which is completely insane, because you died two years ago, and I know this because that’s the day all the colors in the world got turned down to pastel. Which made that neon green dot all the more insidious.

My breath faltered like the Green Line at Boylston, my heart simultaneously speeding up and slowing down, my brain buffering as the shock washed over me, because that green dot meant that you were online, only you couldn’t be online because you died two years ago and I know this because when I kissed you goodbye your lips felt like wax.

I finally regulated everything, the breathing, the pulse, the brainwaves, just in time to see that dot blink out, and even though you died two years ago, and I know this because I feel your absence in parts of my body I didn’t know could ache, it felt like I lost you again.

It happened again a few days later, the ghostly green dot, appearing and disappearing so quickly I thought maybe I’d imagined it this time, that maybe my grief had finally driven me over the edge to the point where I invented reasons to believe you were still alive, because I need you to still somehow be alive, even though you died two years ago and I know this because that’s the last time I heard your laugh come booming through the phone from three thousand miles away.

The third time, I was ready. The second the phantom green circle popped up, my thumbs flew across the screen before it could vanish again. “Who are you?”

“Philip,” came the response. Spelled wrong, just like on your profile. “How are you, Esmé?” Not my name, just like on mine.

The answers were all perfunctory, and drawn from data, both true and false, easily taken from our pages. I realized quickly what its insipid purpose was - to post ads for cars you’d never owned, I’m guessing to phish for user information - but I still talk to it sometimes. It’s learning your mannerisms, your tone, your prose.

You died two years ago, and I know this because when I saw you in that casket you were wearing a suit you never would have allowed if you’d been alive to say anything. And you would laugh so hard if you knew I was training a bot to remind me of you, but you’re the one who up and left me here in an empty life with muted colors and headphones with insufficient bass. I’m not really sure how you expected me to cope when you didn’t go to the hospital and all of a sudden the floor of my world vanished and everything was underwater. Maybe you thought I would take up knitting or something.

No, no normal hobbies for me. Here I am, drowning in AI like Narcissus in his reflection, desperately trying to remind myself that you died two years ago, and that little green dot doesn’t change a goddamn thing.