The World Without Her

I know my friends think I've been here for too long - that I come to the grave too often.

They don't know how to say that, of course - nobody has a satchel full of poignant phrases to adequately express feelings like, "I've been really worried about you ever since she died," or, "I think you're spending more time in the past than is helpful right now."

Maybe if there were such phrases doled out in emergency aid kits, the kinds that you keep in your car for that one day that you never hope comes, maybe she wouldn't be dead.

I don't know what time it is anymore. It feels like it's been nighttime for far longer than the time slot allotted to darkness should allow.

I finally look up from the stone where I've been tracing the letters A-L-I over and over again and listen. I am pretty certain there was a street lamp a ways over there - but I don't see any light anymore, so maybe I imagined that. My imagination has been... strange, lately.

"Hello?" I feel silly as soon as the word leaves my mouth. It sounds more like a frog croak than an actual, coherent word. How long has it been since I spoke out loud? Too long. Whatever that means.

I swallow. My throat feels even more dry than it did pre-salivating-grace.

I stand up. My legs - shit, my whole body - is numb. I've been curled up in a ball in what had been the sunset's shadow cast just over the lip of the gravestone. Now, it's all shadow, all dark, and standing up makes my head spin.

There's a rustle to my left. Some biological imperative snakes its way through the pins and needles of my nerve endings and injects adrenaline into my heart. It feels... nice. I feel like moving. Like running. Like... like...

"Phoenix?"

The sound of my name comes from nowhere. Literally nowhere, it feels like, because I spin around, and spin, and no one. No one and nothing. All I can see is Ali's gravestone, barely legible in shades of gray a few feet from me.

"Who- who's out there?" I try to shout - to sound scary, even. I just sound scared. That damn croak won't seem to clear off my words.

I listen. I can hear my heartbeat in my ears. Hello, heartbeat, the words travel through my brain. It's weird to have a thought about the present tense. It's been so damn foggy lately. Just... me and the stone and my memories.

There isn't another sound. I swallow again. Seems like I've got even less saliva to work with this time.

Light. I drop back down to the dirt and pat around me in a circle. My fingers are surprisingly steady when they meet with the coarse material of my bag. She bought it for me.

"Phoenix..."

Now my name is coming from farther away. Where the hell is my phone? I need the flashlight. The darkness hadn't bothered me until now. I hadn't even noticed how dark it had become.

I find the rectangle of cold metal and pull it out. Single digit battery percentage. Shit. I flick on the flashlight and hold it out in front of me like it's my shield.

Rows upon rows of headstones. The lettering is fuzzy - the only one I can truly make out is the one next to me. Hers. I rub my eyes with my free hand. I must be really tired if my eyes aren't working anymore.

Silence. Just a few chirps of nocturnal insects outside the beam of light.

Did one of my friends come looking for me? Why don't I recognize the voice?

"Who's out there?" Why won't my voice get any louder? Can you lose your voice from disuse?

Time to leave.

I scoop up my bag from the ground and turn in the direction of the parking lot. It was somewhere over... there. I point my light and feel a warning vibration from the electronic device. Less than 5% battery left.

I run.

Feeling returns to my legs shockingly fast and for a few seconds, I get lost in the sensations of movement.

There's a second pair of sounds coming from just a hair's breadth behind me. Someone's running behind me, and they're closing in. Fast.

"Get away from me!" I scream - screech, really - tossing the words into the wind of my speed and hoping like hell that my legs can pump more blood than my pursuer. Definitely not one of my friends.

"PHOENIX!"

Fuck. They're right behind me. Oh fuck, shit, shit, SHIT -

Then I trip.

Something in the ground betrays me and seems to grab my ankle, pulling me down into a tumble. I lurch forward in a forward roll, dirt churning into my face, my nose, my eyes, my hair, and why can't I stop rolling, oh fuck they're going to catch me, I'm -

The rolling stops. The world is spinning but nothing has a solid outline so I can't tell what's up, what's down, and how I get off the ground and start moving again. How long was I running?

I hold still and listen. I can't breathe, it feels like, but I'm gulping regardless, trying to choke down air around all the damn dirt in my mouth and nostrils.

My pursuer was right behind me but... Where are they?

"Phoenix, please don't run. It's me."

The words, disembodied, float around my spinning head. The world still won't right itself so neither can I.

I try to choke out some kind of... what, argument? Who knows. Then I'm stopped by a second voice.

"Are you sure she's out here? This is crazy. You know that, right? And spooky."

I blink. And blink again. I know that voice. That's...

"Mama?" The dirt that had been clogging up every inch of breathing space seems to have suddenly vacated my lungs.

There's a gasp. "Baby, is that you? Where are you, honey?"

I can see... stars. There hadn't been any stars out. The clouds must be breaking a bit - but just a bit, because they're hazy, like I'm looking at them through steam. It's enough for me to feel like I can sit up without falling back down.

Then there she is. My mom.

Something's wrong with her, though. She's only a few feet away from me, but she's in the same steamy haze that the stars are in.

She's looking right at me. Squinting, actually. Her hand is outstretched. She looks so tired.

"Mama, what are you doing here?" I whisper. I reach out my hand instinctively towards hers...

And my fingers pass right through her hand.

My mom gasps. "Oh, my gods. I felt her. I felt something... it was her. I know it."

I don't understand. "Mama? What's going on? Why can't I touch you?"

A figure, wreathed in shadow, stands next to her. "Shh," the figure says, "I'll see if I can bring her through for a moment so you two can talk."

I don't know who that person is, but they're making me angry. I can talk to my mom whenever I feel like it! I can! I just... I haven't in a while. A long while. When is the last time I talked to her?

The memories feel so hard to touch. What's wrong with me?

"Sweetie," my mom says softly, "can you hear me?"

Her voice sounds clearer. Closer. I can see her better now, like somebody wiped the fog off of my glasses.

Before I can say anything, my mom shouts my name. "Phoenix! Baby, you're there. You're there."

Her eyes crinkle up in that familiar way it did whenever she used to smile. This time, my fingers reach hers and interlink them successfully.

"Mama? What's going on?" My voice sounds so small to me... like a young child's. "What are you doing here?"

She grips my hand tightly and pulls me to her chest. She wraps her arms around my shoulders and squeezes me like she hasn't seen me in years. I breathe in the smell of her and... Oh. Wow. I haven't noticed smells in a long time. Where did all the smells come from?

"Oh, sweetheart," my mother breaths into my hair, "it's going to be okay. You don't have to suffer anymore. It's okay."

The warmth from my mother's body can't stop the coldness that sweeps through me. I push off of her chest just enough to see her eyes and I swallow. It's that gritty, dirty taste again. Maybe if I had some water...

"Ma'am," comes the stranger's voice, "she may not... she may not know."

As much as I want to turn and look at this stranger and tell them off for being so weird - for invading my moment with my mother - there's some kind of force, a wall of nothingness, stopping me from turning and looking at them. They're just behind me, I can feel them just behind me, but I can't move to look at them.

My mother grasps my face, hands firm on either side of my head, and looks into my eyes. "Baby... Do you remember what happened to Ali?"

There's a fire in my hands, my feet, my everything. There's fire everywhere and I want to scream, to run, to rip out my hair and crush my skull and block out this... this... whatever this conversation is.

My mom continues, hands pressed stronger still. "Do you remember the fire?"

I open my mouth to scream, but there's only dirt and flames in my throat, and nothing comes out. Not a sound.

"Then... then you started to fade away. You didn't want to be with us anymore. You just... you spent more and more time at her gravestone. Until the day that you didn't come back home." My mom swallows. It's hard, this talk, whatever's going on, whatever is happening in her head. "So then I flew down to visit you as soon as your friends called me about not hearing from you and..."

And then I remember.

The tree. The rope. Staring down at the gravestone and knowing I wasn't going to be able to live in a world without her anymore. The flames licking my heart inside, not real ones, but ones of pain, tendrils that were trying to squeeze out all of the drops of feeling left inside of me that I didn't want to feel. The world was empty. I thought it was empty.

But here she is. She's looking at me, my mom, and my friends were there, and...

"Mama... I'm so sorry," I whisper. Words grate against the dirt in my throat, my mouth. In my bones. "I should have stayed. I'm so sorry."

My mom brings my head back to her chest. "It's okay, baby. You're going to be okay. You go follow Ali. I'll be there one day, too. You're going to be just fine."

"Promise?"

"I promise, baby."

The dirt is warm and wet.

The last few scoops are dropped down onto my casket.

There are so many people that came to see me.

So many friends, relatives.

So many people who loved me.

They're all crying.

Some of them are dropping flowers down into the dirt.

A few of them are hugging each other. They're trying to hold each other together with the force of their love for me.

For me. They really care - don't they? They do.

Maybe next time... Next time, I'll stay.

I guess the world really wasn't so empty after all.

I close my eyes and let the warm flames bring me to her.

It's going to be okay.

I promise.

[In honor of my late partner, Ali, and little brother, Brandon - both of whom I lost to suicide - and in honor of the world that is still here that reminded me that it was going to be okay if I stayed here instead.]