#leafmutt

                  i debated posting anything for almost a week, to be quite honest. i thought about just acknowledging it in my own way like i do every year and celebrate two of my closest friends today. i have so many mixed emotions about today. 

                  it’s been awhile, i don’t blame anyone who wasn’t around or don’t remember. but the community lost a very special person today a few years ago and it deeply changed who i am as a person. i even got a tattoo in direct memory of her and it’s a constant reminder every day to be in love with the soul inside my body even if i’m a little less than societal norms. she loved to write, she loved to draw, she loved her nieces. she loved naruto and spider man and old crooner ballads. i miss her every day.

                 i’m sorry i’ve been a distant echo on here the last week or so, but i have been a mishmash of emotions. i have mixed feelings about continuing on doing something even as simple as rping, if only because it was so important to us when she was here. it’s how we met, almost 8 years ago in a naruto rp group chat on aim. she touched an entire community. every now and then, when i meet new friends here, i think man, i wish you could have met her because she was just so. real. authentically her own person. i wish everyone here could have met her, and not just learned about her as a past tense. 

                  this space in particular is hard to navigate considering how many things remind me of her. how can i just...continue on like normal? i know that’s not what i’m doing but...this time of year is always, always the hardest. i doubt myself and my ability to cope. the cut doesn’t hurt until i address it’s there. 

                 i apologize to bring down anyone’s mood, but this was a space we both occupied for a long time and it’s one of the few things i still have. i feel connected, here.  

When had been here last his grave was a mound of fresh dirt. The service had been unusually chilly after a week of hot late-summer days. Both he and Kankuro had lurked toward the back of the crowd. At the time it had been unclear whether or not they were welcome. The family did not greet them, nor did they ask them to leave. Kankuro had made a move to stand in line for the shovel, but then he retreated before his turn, out of place amongst the Inuzuka clan who were loud and brazen even in their grief. The brothers had left soon after the final prayers in silence.

Now Gaara sat at the gravesite itself. He reached for the headstone, faltered, and found purchase in the grass instead.

"Hey, Kiba."

He had not planned to speak aloud. He had not planned to speak at all. The dead don't have ears. But once he began, the rest spilled out in a deluge.

He told Kiba everything. When he ran out of words to say he found himself talking about nothing, almost rambling, in a way so uncharacteristic of him he wondered for moment if the dead truly do have ears, if they even had a power beyond what he could comprehend, sucking the life out of him with an otherworldly straw. By the time he had finished, the shade of the tree under which he had taken shelter had crept, leaving him exposed under the light of early day. Birds had flocked to the branches; a mourning dove cooed and received a distant coo in return. Somewhere, a cricket chirped.

"You always pushed so hard. I never asked you to. I wasn't always kind to you in return, and I didn't make things easy for you." Kiba hadn't always made things easy for Gaara, either, but that was something of a moot point now. "I’m better now - I’m getting better. I think you’d want to know that. I'm in recovery. They don't say recovered. I don't think it - I don't think the addiction ever goes away, not entirely. But it's a clinic..."

He had removed his sandals and his feet were caked in sod, having tunneled beneath the dewy grass into the dirt beneath. He felt connected there, this broken shell of a body tying him from the worms and beetles of the earth to a pair of ravens circling above. In each scar a nightmare of a memory, in each breath the will to thrive in spite of them. He sat there a while. When his shoulders began to burn, he only shifted, something stronger than his own muscles rooting him in place. He reached out again, this time tracing his fingers across the granite inscription with goosebumps stippling his arms, and felt at once as if every atom in him had dissolved into the womb of the universe; as if he could no longer call himself a separate human entity, but merely matter in this temporary form, waiting, patiently, to be released back into stardust.

A maintenance van pulled into the nearby parking lot. Across the way, a group clad in all black began gathering by the gated entrance. Beyond, the world came alive with a construction crew down the street, children making their way to school, the groan of a train chugging across ancient tracks. Gaara gathered himself to his feet.

"Well, don’t let me take up your entire day," he said in an attempt at a joke he hoped Kiba would appreciate. God knew they could have both used some levity, a lifetime ago.

From his backpack he pulled a small potted plant. "Flowers die," he explained as he nestled it against Kiba's headstone. Its tender leaves stretched up, up, up towards the waiting sun. "But someone has to care for this.” For a moment more he lingered. In his chest he found softness, and cradled it close.

this past weekend a childhood friend of mine died suddenly a month after her 25th birthday from some random heart condition that no one knew she even had. her dad apparently went the same way when she was a kid. everyone is getting older and as we get older people die, people are taken from us, and I keep thinking about all the death over the past few years. in high school a guy from my swim team fell out of a window and died at the age of 19. a classmate’s friend committed suicide last christmas, I don’t even think he was 20. or maybe just barely 21. you. and now karen who was beautiful and had such promise and was so sweet and wonderful is probably in a morgue or cremated or under some white sheet somewhere. It feels like people are being stolen from us. You always hear of the stereotype of the old lady and all her friends dead or the old vietnam veteran who was the last one standing of his troop or whatever, but nobody tells you that even when you’re so young people will just start dropping like flies, people your age, and there’s nothing you can do about it and you don’t expect any of it. and I guess especially with everything on the news, terrorists here and in the uk, and the police violence here, it’s almost like you read a news article about yet another mom shot point blank in front of her kids or a 12 year old shot in cold blood, or that college guy in north korea and you just think “oh, just another one” and go about your day and it’s scary how it’s becoming like that even when it’s people you know. not that you don’t think about it, but at a point you just have to keep pushing and you cant break down over every death, you can’t let it ruminate and ruminate. even peach, my rat, she’s getting up there, over 2 years old now and slowing down a bit and before I realized it I was already mentally preparing myself for her death even though it might not be for another year or more. and I think about my cousin’s husband, how his mom died suddenly of a heart attack in her 40s less than a week before their wedding. they cancelled the whole thing. Still got married, but later of course, how can you celebrate when your life is ruined? and karen’s mom, god - first her husband dies then her daughter, her oldest child. nobody should have to live through the death of their husband and their child in such a short time. they should have had decades, half a century, more. how could she live? how can she stand that? how could anybody?

anyway the reason i’m writing this is because I was trying to log onto my old 8tracks account, and I finally remembered the username after some major internet sleuthing, and I found the playlist I made for you.  I had totally forgotten about it.

I was telling shi the other day that my new apartment (I moved into my own 1 bedroom now, by the way, aren’t I such an adult or whatever), and I was telling her how ugly the bathroom is - this terrible dijon-mustard-yellow 70s bathroom tile. so ugly. the only colors that would go with it are brown or gray or white. and I was telling shi how ugly it was then I remembered that your favorite colors were my least favorite colors, yellow and gray. I don’t understand how anyone could like them. 

  I was thinking a lot about my birthday/the anniversary of your death. I know - I KNOW - you would want us to be happy and you would want me to celebrate my birthday, but I also know you wouldn’t want us to forget you, either (even if you wouldn’t admit it). I was going to take that day off and just chill but because of ~overworked social worker stereotypes~ I’ll pretty much be out and about dealing with kids all day that day. I’m spending time with friends Friday and possible also Saturday, and spending time with my great-aunt on Sunday, so it’s a busy weekend.

  I decided not to light the yahrzeit candle until the real Hebrew anniversary, October 12th (the 10th of Tishrei). That means I still feel like I need to do something to “remember” you, or whatever, on the actual day, which is stupid. And I feel like remembering death is such a personal thing, too personal to google. Lighting two candles seems to cheapen the thing. Writing something feels meh, you can’t plan something like that, and besides, half my writing tag is filled with stuff about you, anyway.

  I’m absurdly good at handling grief anyway. I know I’m not going to break down crying or be a mess. I can act normal. Maybe I’ll make a bracelet like the one I sent you and put it on my wall of friend things. You had the ugliest favorite colors but they were still your favorites

  I forgot about your playlist and I don’t remember when I forgot. I guess around the time I stopped using iTunes. I’m listening to it now. I was really trying to coordinate a busy birthday weekend to a) not remember and b) remember in the way you’d want me to simultaneously but plans are falling through so I might have to make backups. None of my different friend groups would really get along with each other so I’m trying to work that out.

  I’m going to do the yahrzeit candle the traditional way, so October...10th? I’ll have to double check the Hebrew calendar. Even though you wouldn’t care and I guess I don’t. Maybe I could light two? or do something else on the 23rd? I wonder what happened to the bracelet that I made for you. If what I hear is true about nobody cleaning out your room, it must still be in there. That’s weird to think about.