When I was twelve years old, my oldest friend finally gave in to the cancer that had been eating her up since we were seven. I remember her memorial clearer than I remember what I ate for dinner last night – still sharp and fresh in my head, still stinging like an open wound. The church where the service was held had mahogany walls and hard benches and I cried quietly on my best friend’s shoulder. There were multicolored cat cutouts on the walls. Her mom was crying, and when I hugged her, I hung on. She seemed like she would break if someone didn’t hold her together.

After, I wrote everything down. The world felt like it had tipped sideways, strange in its lopsidedness, because, you see, I can’t remember my life before that girl, and the fact that she’s gone is still a gaping hole that I am afraid to look at, for fear it swallows me up. So, I took the unspeakably awful and wrote it down. I wrote it as beautifully as I could, wrote down all I could remember of her and everything lovely I had left in me, and it poured out like an ocean, like a dam had broken inside of me. It left me feeling hollow, but less like I was completely shattered. Empty but whole.

I gave my pages of writing to my friend’s mother. I left them in her mailbox. She cried the next time she saw me, hugged me hard. I write for her, for everyone who lost someone and for everyone who was lost. I write for me. The ink is stitches in an open wound, and I do my best to make sure I don’t bleed.