You were here when I dreamt you telling me of your dying after I found you in the bathroom melting behind a closed door. I came in to ask if you were sick. You looked at me with the eye that you weren’t cleaning the residue out of and told me it had been happening for a while now, and you led us out the door for a walk.
Outside was orange, burnt, and there were things moving only in the direction opposite of us A short long round-backed green-blue animal that you told me the name of, I had never seen one, but you knew of it well.
ANOTHER WORD FOR FUNERAL.
You were even because I wasn’t looking at you. The clouds grew thick enough in the quiet pockets which should have held the sound of your steps that I knew we were walking to a place where you were gone. When I think of it now I know that I said nothing but in the orange dirt I was loud next to your silence.
You had another word for funeral, it doesn’t matter the word. You said it the way you say anything you know won’t be met with my eyes.
WRITTEN BY JENNA COMSTOCK ILLUSTRATED BY SOPHIE BARLOW DESIGNER ELLIE NICOLL
