Where I'll Be

By the time you find this, I’ll be somewhere only my soul could carry me.

If I don’t come back, don’t follow the roads. Don’t unfold a map like it knows the way. Instead, fold it the way you used to fold love letters—carefully, with trembling fingers, afraid the crease might split a name in half. The path to me isn’t paved in miles or marked with signs. It begins, simply, with remembering.

Close your eyes.

Start in our backyard, where the grass always grew a little too wild and the summer air buzzed with that soft, familiar hum. Fireflies blinked like Morse code across our bare arms, and the wind carried the scent of sunscreen and cut watermelon. That’s your first stop. You’ll hear my laugh tucked inside the chirp of cicadas; in the creak of the swing I never outgrew. Stay there for a moment—let the memory settle into your bones.

When you're ready, walk barefoot—yes, barefoot—into the woods behind the house. Down the old trail where dogwood trees bloom like lace each spring. Do you remember? We buried Tucker there, my first dog. He’s still waiting. His tail is wagging. If you sit still long enough, he’ll nudge your hand with his nose and curl beside you like time never passed at all. And I’ll be there too, watching from the trees, smiling through the golden hush of dusk.

But that’s only the beginning.

Next, listen for the waves. Let them draw you in like lullabies sung by the Earth herself. The ocean knows me now. I go to her when the stars feel too far away, when silence weighs too heavily. Wade in. Waist-deep. Let the salt sting your skin. If you're brave, dive. Go deeper. Sunlight fractures above you like stained glass. Somewhere beneath the reef, I left pieces of my laughter tucked into coral caves. I tied my fears to the ankles of fish who swim without questions. There’s a blue so deep it doesn’t exist anywhere else. That’s where I go when I’m tired of breathing the same air as my sadness.

When the tide carries you back to shore, don’t rush. Look west. Let the sun guide you, but not all at once. On the way, stop in the fields of yellow flowers—those endless fields where my grandfather once took me. He wore denim and smelled like tobacco and sawdust. I’ve seen him again. He’s younger now. Whole. He’s building something—he won’t say what—but he lets me help. The wood is soft here. Time doesn’t splinter. Inside the house, my grandmas in the kitchen, humming old hymns and frying dough like it’s Sunday. Her hands don’t shake anymore. She doesn’t hurt. She calls me “sugar” and tells stories with her eyes closed, like she’s living them all over again.

This place doesn’t have an address. But if you find it—stay. Tell them I sent you. They’ll understand.

And when you leave, there’s a river ahead. Wider than belief. You’ll need a boat made from memories to cross it. Build it from birthday candles and ticket stubs, from Polaroids with faded edges and scribbled names. Use the sound of your mother’s voice calling you in for dinner. Use the weight of your father’s hugs—the ones that felt like armor. Let grief be the wind in your sail. Let hope be the compass.

Halfway across, look up. The stars will be waiting—Orion, Cassiopeia, that one you swore looked like a heart. They don’t care what you named them. But they remember. They remember the nights you looked up and asked for something more. That ache in your chest? That was me, whispering back.

Beyond the river, the path gets stranger.

You’ll wander through dreams I never had the courage to chase: a bookstore with ladders and stained-glass ceilings; a sleepless city where rain smells like cinnamon and music pours from every alley; a desert where the sand hums beneath your feet and the stars hang low enough to brush your fingertips. These are the places I meant to go. The ones I still visit in the quiet of forever.

And if you make it that far—if you keep walking even when your heart folds in on itself—you’ll find the moon.

She’s bigger than we thought. Her surface glows, soft and silver. There are no craters here, only gentle hills and the sound of old piano music. My soul sleeps here sometimes, when Earth feels too heavy. I carve poems into the dust with my fingertips. If you read them backward, they become lullabies. If you sing them, they open doorways.

But I won’t be here, either. Not for long.

Because by then, I’ll have gone farther—past the edges of logic and time. Beyond the velvet of space, where clocks forget how to tick. That’s where I’ll be. Dancing between galaxies. Riding comets. Painting auroras in places no eyes will ever see. There’s a silence here that hums like the inside of a womb—not empty, but expectant.

And I am light.

Still—if you truly want to find me, if your heart aches for something real—there’s one last thing to do.

Close your eyes again. Place your hand over your heart. Not gently—knock. Knock like you expect someone to answer.

And I will.

Because I never really left.

I’ve just become part of everything I loved most. The waves. The woods. The songs we never finished. The stories we never told.

You’ll find me in the giggle of a baby and the creak of a rocking chair. In the echo of your name called through fog. In the split second before sunrise breaks. In the smell of your dog’s fur when you bury your face in it and whisper, “I love you.”

I’m there. I’m all of that now.

So, if I never return…

Find the backyard.

The woods.

The ocean.

The people we loved.

The sky.

The stars.

The ache.

The joy.

Your own pulse.

That’s my map.

And if you follow it—

You’re already with me.