mitch is dead.

he has been dead for six months.
his body is nothing but a pile of cold, sad bones
and thin, leathery skin falling off in chunks,
resting in an even colder, sadder casket.
mitch is dead.

the days right after he died,
his voice would come to me only in
stories and recollections told by mourning tongues
and songs that seeped slowly from the radio,
the same way he seeped slowly out of life
until he was so far gone,
no one even knew which direction to start looking
for mitch.

the stories and recollections died down until
they remembered to retell them once every month,
like he had been buried and forgotten
once their grief had been forgotten
that was the worst part,
seeing mitch disappear like he was this
dandelion that had been blown away.

my mind wanders off constantly,
slipping through lines and boundaries and blurs
like it is on slippery ice,
but it always, always,
always
runs back to

mitch.

he is always there,
in the faces of hurried strangers
to poetic song lyrics i cling onto when they’re played on the radio
to fragments of articles printed in the local paper
to the suffocating air when i am alone

he said this is what giving up feels like:
it’s like seeing your own leg bleeding out,
feeling the life drip out of you and onto the asphalt,
and not giving a damn.