Evergreen

And so we come here to the place of a thousand voices. I thought this was a necropolis, but every inch of it feels and sounds alive. There is something more sinister at work here besides the miserly claw of time. We know what fought your will to life. We know that sometimes, there are dualistic forces at work.

When I first saw you, you were in the same room as we were. You led along the first lines of our thinking in this certain way. There were tiny lines, tendrils, connecting us. Arteries and nerves of this thing we call friendship. How do I know? How did we know? No one thought of the thousand stars because they were busy staring at the black curtain.

Now you're a series of polaroids. Your face becomes etched ever more weakly, like a repetitious cliche. But who needs the world of old houses? Musty investments; this crumbling material we call life. I find it silly when I think about it, too. Now I am the old lady, writing about my irrelevancy, and you've had the last laugh.

You are ever alive. You are ever green. You'd think we would forget, and that would be your last erasing. People like you are often wrong in that, it seems. Sometimes I think that we remember those who have gone more than our daily missal and our waking hours. The tiny grains and threads that pass through our hands weave a patient past. You were not patient. Sometimes, we just have to spring up and out.