For all Sad Words of Tongue and Pen, the Saddest are These, ‘It Might Have Been’
John Greenleaf Wittier

The train that took me from Grand Central to my old hometown was very uncomfortable. All my life I never liked being stared at and being looked at. I didn’t mind when people stared at me when they were talking to me, but staring from afar or up close for no reason, like bored and curious people tend to do on public transportation, makes me nervous constantly. It was probably due to being teased as a kid in school. I always felt apprehensive when walking by two girls giggling in a secret fashion or a couple of guys crowded around one another talking real low and looking in my general direction. Perhaps it was just teenage paranoia, but whatever it was I had it bad.

I smiled unknowingly and thought about how I managed to survive the trauma of high school and even go on to college and do pretty good for myself. I had just gotten out and was immediately offered a job I couldn’t turn down—assistant secretary at RCA Records. I graduated top of my class. I had many friends. My weekends were free to go camping or go clubbing or even to go see the Opera which I had inwardly admitted being fond of.

I believed New York City was especially beautiful in the winter. I lived in Manhattan in a beautiful apartment I was proud to call my own. I had my friend David (who I had come to know through work—the company represented David’s band Helium) come by the weekend I moved in, and with some friends of ours we completely redecorated the apartment. I had to admit I was lucky—really lucky. Too lucky, some have said. I didn’t care. I was living my life exactly how I wanted to live it…or so I thought.

There’s something to be said about people who have everything, but just enough everything that it becomes manageable and predictable, safe and enjoyable. There’s something to be said about being comfortable in one’s own shoes. But sometimes those shoes had a plan of their own.

My shoes led me to Grand Central.

It was December 22nd, and I would be home for the holidays for the first time in four years. Usually I would stay with friends on the holiday. I often felt bad about not visiting my mother enough, though. She wasn’t old but she was weary. She wasn’t sad but she wasn’t particularly happy either. She was…comfortable.

This Christmas would be different.

I shuffled my feet uneasily and tried not to look at the old woman sitting across from me a few seats back who was staring intently at me for no apparent reason. The box of holiday chocolates lay on my lap with the newspaper I was reading earlier.

I got off at the next stop and hailed a cab. It was twilight before I reached the quiet suburban neighborhood I had recognized from childhood. The streets were all the same black fibers that were punctuated by potholes and broken curb. I smiled just recognizing these features and it reminded me to visit home more often.

Tonight there was a party. My mother had invited some of her close friends and family, and some of my friends I had kept in-touch with over the years (or not as the case were) would be there too, it seemed. I was slightly nervous as I always am when I'm about to enter a room full of people. I straightened my tie outside of the old front door. I heard the laughter inside and decided to go in, as apprehensive as I was.

People were immediately drawn to me like flies to a sweet cake in summer. They barraged me with questions. Where are you living now? Oh, that’s a fine area. Have you had anything to eat? What do you do now? Haven’t you got a larger jacket? It’s colder over here than it is in Manhattan. Social commentary was never my strong suit but I somehow managed to charm the enquirers. Manhattan. Yes, and my apartment is gorgeous, you should see it sometime. No, but I’m sure I’ll feel better after having some wonderful homemade food again. I never get that in the city. I work at RCA, it pays well, so it’s not so bad, plus, I get to work with rock stars. I could get you an autograph. No, I wish I brought a bigger one now. Oh it’s quite cold here—the city heat warms us all up at night.

Mother was weary as I had expected and met me in the hall. She gave me a peck on the cheek and a smile and asked me to put the potato salad on the table. She walked around another corner and I sighed and realized she had gone to get a little privacy while she did her dirty little secret. It was maddening to see her smoking still. Well, I couldn’t really see her smoking, because she never let on she still smoked in front of me, not once in 25 years of my existence. I guess dirty little secrets like that don’t just vanish over time I thought. I walked around a bit. There were many people to greet and converse with. Some were interesting and some were dull who had dull and monotonous lives. The more I thought about it the more I started to question the excitement in my own life.

“Sarah!” I exclaimed, calling out to the long-haired brunette on the other side of the room I had just noticed. She had a wineglass in her hand and a ring on her finger. She smiled happily.

“Jonathan! I’d never suspect you’d show up at one of your mother’s holiday parties,” she laughed.

“I’ve been away too long. Say, do you know why I’m seeing half these people here from high school, some I don’t even know?” I laughed nervously.

“Don’t you know your mother? She just up and invites every friend she has in town, and their kids. My mother is here too,” she said.

“And your husband that I have yet to hear about?” I said, motioning to her hand. She giggled again.

“Yes, yes, he is here too,” she admitted. I smirked, and then eyed the crowd once more.

“Who else is here that I should be concerned about?”

“Mrs. Treydale, she loves to blabber on about her seven kids—believe me, you don’t want to get caught up in that one. Mr. Mancuso, who will only talk about the war so unless you’re all up to that for the rest of the night—because I’m sure there’s no way to sneak away—don’t attempt at conversation. There’s Trudy from high school, you remember her? yeah,” Sarah said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. She didn’t like Trudy. I didn’t like Trudy. She was a stuck up bitch with an old lady’s name. “Then there’s Jack Forrester and, um, oh…,” she said with an excited pause.

“What?” I smiled unknowingly.

She nearly laughed, and took a drink from her glass to calm herself. “It’s just, oh, there’s someone else, someone special here, too.” Why was she being so secretive?

“Tell me, Sarah Jones, or I’ll bite your head off!” I said laughing. It was an old and silly joke from high school. She remembered after a moment and laughed with me.

“Take in mind that’s Mrs. Sarah Anderson,” she said with a big grin. “And little Nick,” she said, and patted her stomach softly. I don’t think I was as surprised as I should have been, but I was very happy for her. We had both found success. Of course mine entailed a great deal more wealth and freedom and spare time.

So why did I admire her success more?

“Congrats,” I said happily. “When are you due?”

“July.”

“Wow, that’s great,” I said. “That’s great,” I said again, considerably less soft.

“You’re happy for me, aren’t you hun?”

“I’m very happy for you. Why shouldn’t I be?”

“You seem down.”

“I’m not, I’m happy. I’m always happy when you are happy.” She seemed to accept this for a minute. “Please tell me what ‘special’ person is here?” I asked her.

“I don’t see why I should. You won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

“What’s wrong is I’m envious of the knowledge you are withholding from me very un-nicely.”

“Oh, isn’t that so like you Jon? You always need to know everything,” she said, and for a moment she seemed mock-serious. “Even in high school, all the time.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, thinking of the right words, “tell me.”

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“Tell me, please Sarah.”

“Get me another seltzer,” she requested. I got one for her. “No,” she said with a small smile as she took a sip of the beloved liquid.

“Oh come on! You know, you’re losing your valuable best friend status with me, Sare.”

“Like it matters,” she said her eyes narrowing. “Perhaps then you’d actually call me instead of me having to meet you at one of your mother’s parties,” she said, clearly agitated. I could see this was going nowhere fast. I didn’t have anything decent to say. There was no reason to not call her or talk to her for so many years. We had been very close all throughout high school. There was no reason for us to be in this position.

“Devon McDermott.” She said clearly. I wish she said it drunkenly, fuzzily, sloppily. If she had, I would have asked her to repeat it and perhaps she would tell me a different name instead of the one she had mentioned.

My throat was dry, but I didn’t move from where I was. She had one hand on her side and the other on her drink, raising it to the edge of her mouth whenever she felt she needed it.

I asked her to repeat the name again, but it was the same. Damnit. I wasn’t expecting to see him. But perhaps she just said it to make me nervous? I asked her about it.

“He’s here,” she assured me, and swiftly walked off to greet some other guests. I couldn’t tell if she fled from me quickly or if I simply hadn’t moved at all. I gulped. I uneasily walked around the place—anxious and unprepared.

I started to get very nervous. I talked very little with the other guests after that. All I knew was that I had to leave. I didn’t want to have to face Devon here. Not now. Maybe we would talk again, someday. I’d give him a call a week from now and tell him I must have missed him at the party. We could talk online and exchange formalities over the internet. But please, God, don’t let him see me tonight.

I knew what I would do. I would lose my words, become decomposed and unglued and sad around him. I left him over five years ago, and didn’t look back, not even for a moment. I couldn’t look back. He was my weakness, my everything, and I left him.

We went out for a year after that one night he snuck into my room (which he did often those days) and fell asleep beside me, and finally admitted he loved me. We went out and then I left. I didn’t look back but he never went to look for me either.

It was a fallout, plain and simple, but there was something still there—something just slightly intangible—that just made a wrenching pain when I tried to pull away from him inside me. This thing, this feeling, was so beyond reasoning. It scared me. It scared me not because I didn’t know what it was, or because I didn’t know what it would do to me (I know what it would have made me done). I was frightened of being controlled by it.

I don’t know what it was inside of me that caused me to stray from my friends after high school, especially from Devon McDermott. Except, I did. And I was convinced Devon knew the reason too.

I had to leave. I ran to my mother and kissed her and apologized and said I had something urgent to take care of at the studio and she was sad but she kissed me and said alright and happy holidays. I ran to the door and threw the coat over my shoulders and turned the knob and threw the door open and as I was coming through the door into the crisp night, expecting the beautiful suburban air to fill my lungs, I realized I had been deceived. A thick heavy smoke hung like death in the air, and it nearly made me gag. The door came shut and I’m sure no one really saw me leave. I coughed and waved my hands in front of my head to clear away the smoke.

I turned to see who the offending smoker would be. I was surprised at who I found.

He smiled at me sadly and looked back out onto the lawn and put the cigarette to his mouth again. “No snow yet,” he mentioned casually, motioning to the snow-less dead ground. I could only nod. I had been glued to the spot. I wanted to leave so badly before but now I wasn’t so sure if I could, or if I wanted to.

He turned to look at me, a quite serious expression on his face. “What’s the matter, Jon? Don’t let me keep you. But I don’t think you’ll find any use going that way without transportation. The highway doesn’t take kindly to pedestrians.” SHIT. I had forgotten I had come here in a cab. What was I planning to do, anyway? Get out of that house and just RUN? No, I expected to hail a cab. But this wasn’t the city. Nothing was like the city here.

“Ah, aha,” I managed to choke out with a hesitant smile. He turned away from me again, as if I was just some random somebody, some nothing. Someone who just needed quick directions out of town. Devon was the last person you wanted to ask about that. He would try to physco-analyze your situation and make you second guess yourself. Did you really want to go in that direction?.

It was silent for a while and he did not look over at me. I was cold even with my jacket, while he just wore a black tee shirt. I looked at his face. He still was as handsome and sexy as I remembered. He still had that wild and untamed hair. Now, however, he seemed to look quite older—wearier—than he was. He was a man back from a decade of war: bruised, tired, and emotionless. He didn’t even seem like he wanted to argue with me about why I never came home to visit, or why I hadn’t talked to him in over five years.

He was skinny. Very skinny. Skinnier than I remembered him being as a teenager. I wondered how he was eating and what his diet was. It didn’t look healthy.

He sighed and turned to me again, a hand behind his back. From his large back pocket he grabbed a small wrapped box.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, but the words seemed so dead and lifeless against my ears. But it couldn’t have been because he meant nothing to me now, could it? No, time may change things, but it could have never changed the way I felt about Devon, and I didn’t believe it could change the way he thought about me.

I took the gift hesitantly and held it loosely in my right hand. I looked up at him sadly. “But…I didn’t get anything…for you…” I said, very embarrassed. I guess I shouldn’t have been. There was no need for gifts. I always sent my mother a gift every year, something nice and expensive she could use to lavish affection on herself; to treat herself better than she does. I would always send fruit baskets or cheese and sausages or autographs from work or whatever to the people I liked throughout the holiday season—before or after, it made no difference, to them or to me.

With Devon, it was different. My heartbeat started to quicken again, as it did back in the days when that motion would often overtake me when I was with him. It was just that something, that thing he would do, he would just…do something to a person that would make them want to immediately give back to him, repay him. It was always impossible. Because I’ve learned long ago Devon McDermott wasn’t even human.

I was convinced for a long while he was some god, some lifeless God, looking after the weary and the dead. And when I was weary, he took me in and made me better…and then sent me on my way again, which meant far away from him.

Why did I get the feeling he wasn’t expecting a return gift?

There was no outward display of emotion, nothing changed from before. I held the gift tightly in my hands. He leaned in and kissed me softly. For a moment, I was so caught up in the moment that I barely heard him crying.

His body shook next to mine as he put his arms around me and cried. And when a friend weeps openly at you, whether it is 5 days or 5 years, he will still matter to you. His tears will still matter to you.

“I-I’m sorry,” I said, referring to the gift, out of habit—but I knew he wasn’t crying over some present. He laughed at me like I knew he would, and I thought for a moment maybe I knew he would laugh and that’s why I said it.

He pulled back from me, laughing slightly, swiping the water away from his eyes.

“Come back to my place?” he asked. He didn’t need to ask. I think I was ready to go anywhere with him, despite the fact that just a few moments ago, I wanted to leave.

“Of course,” I said. Wordlessly we made the drive to a building complex I had never seen before. It wasn’t like my apartment. The floors seemed gritty from lack of maintenance, and the elevator had duck tape to hold the inner-matting together on the walls. The elevator itself seemed pretty unsafe, and under normal circumstances I would have refused to use it. But this wasn’t really what I’d call normal.

We reached his door, where he announced his place would have bit of a mess to it. When we walked through that door, it seemed like the biggest understatement I had ever heard. There were boxes upon boxes stacked up near the walls. Clothes and empty beer cans were lying on the floors. The television was frizzy and didn’t have any decent reception. The furniture was already old and sagging, and everything reeked of sadness. I wanted to leave, but I knew I couldn’t. It just depressed me that he actually lived here.

Yes, I wanted to take him away from all of this crap and despair, and whatever type of hell he was living in. But I didn’t know where to start.

He sighed and took off his coat and my coat and laid them on the couch. He was embarrassed, it was obvious, and I didn’t want to make it so. But I didn’t know what I could say to make this less awkward.

I had come to the conclusion that I didn’t know fucking squat.

“It’s a shithole, but it’s life,” he said finally.

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” he sighed, scratching the back of his head. He sat down at the couch and turned the TV off. I sat down next to him when he motioned me over. “I’ve made some…mistakes,” he said regretfully. I was about to object, but he continued. “There’s only so many times an artist can retouch a painting, a life, to make it perfect. Over time, without protection, as many humans are, we are mortal, we die. Paintings can fade if not protected. And we die.” I sighed, and he continued.

“When I look back on my life, my maker’s God, I think how he practiced his brushstrokes on me—a dash of intellect here, a bit of handsomeness there, a bunch of cynicism and wit there…” he paused, playing with the broken fibers on the couch anxiously, although his words, his stream of conscious never lacked in beauty. “But…if I could go back and see it all again, and do it all again, of course I would have no regrets. It’s through regrets that we are human. So how is it that I am so like Him, and yet so different? God can’t regret, I can’t regret, I am essentially a mirror image of him, and yet he can allow everyone else to feel, to breathe in and feel this pain and regret…such an unfinished painting…I’m just a couple of scribbles, so perfect and jaded and stupidly composed and awkward…” he grit his teeth and stood up suddenly. I was taken back by the whole thing.

“Well you know what?” he said angrily, if not to me than a distant place or time or existence not too far from here, to a person or thing or creature that only might or might not care. “I don’t fucking give a shit anymore! Fine, just fine, let me die! Let everything around me die! Let my portrait be the only one so unfinished and so miserably mortal and horrible—but I will regret, and I do regret!” he said, now pacing back and forth across the room.

My hands were shaking badly. “What—what are you talking about, Dev?” I asked, my voice wavering. I felt so sick. I was making myself sick listening to him. His words were like poetry, but at his worst they were a sad song meant for breaking hearts.

He stopped, swiped his sleeve over his eyes and walked back to the couch. His tone now more reserved, quiet, and still. I sighed deeply, trying to calm him down more.

He closed his eyes and turned his head away slightly. “I regret I didn’t call you when I had the chance,” he said.

“No,” I murmured softly. “It’s fine, I didn’t either.”

“No, it’s not fine, Jonathan!” he said, turning to me again. “It’s not fine, or okay, or good.” He paused again. “I regret getting high with my new friends after you left, when I was depressed, just waiting for something, for God, if not just for a word from you."

“Oh God, Dev, I’m so—”

“Please, please,” he said. “I regret cutting and drinking and shooting up and bottoming out low in some…somewhere…in someone’s house…someone’s fucking yard…” He banged his hand against his wall. “I regret being a masochist. I regret not loving someone else when I had the time to love again. I regret having said I loved you, not loving you, because I needed that—but saying it, John, and I’m so sorry for saying it.”

By that time I was crying even more than he had before. He knelt in front of me and took my hands and made me look at him. “I regret not being in school, I regret not trying to…to go back and get my GED. I regret being so selfish. I regret…I regret staying that night, that night, and making everything worse and I regret making you stay with me longer than you should have and I’m just regretful of everything that I did…” and then he looked up to me. “But I told you once: I don’t regret what happened at school all those years ago. I’ll never regret that.”

I grabbed his shoulders and tried to pull him near me. I was still hysterical. I clutched on to his shirt, dragging myself down and down into myself. I wondered if he’d still be regretting those things, if he would have remained the same Devon if I had stayed. I felt the subtle hints, like fingers at my neck (which I’m sure were there as well), making me understand what he meant, or what he was trying to say.

“Oh God, Devon, you’re not, you’re not, don’t—” I said, clawing at him again, while he tried to remain composed. He had to be the one holding on, he had to be the one standing still in order for me to see what was so plainly in view right in front of me.

I stood up and nearly fell into him. He held me close and whispered in my ear. “If I were a painting, I’d might as well have been Da Vinci’s, but stranded for all those centuries in the middle of a field somewhere, left to rot it out. The paint’s been peeling for so long, and you can see I’ve gotten so thin, I’m drying out, and fading, and I’ve got absolutely nothing to show for it.”

I tried to calm down, but I couldn’t. I never thought about death before. And why should I? I was so young, so naïve and…happy? I thought so. Wasn’t I happy in my beautiful apartment, with tons of rich friends, a social calendar parallel to those of the great entertainers and businessmen, and enough money to support myself, my mother, and everyone I held dear?

“I’m dying, Jonathan,” and with those three words, he completely tore down any inch of sanity I was bound to. The delicate thin inches of thread holding me in place, like some sick balancing act, had been cut. I was left to dangle helplessly in the arms of fate. I didn’t know what to do, but then again, I never did. I just kept thinking please, God, don’t take the only thing that ever made me happy. Don’t take the only thing that’s real to me as I slid, almost paralyzed, onto the floor.

When I woke up I was in an unfamiliar bed with a familiar sent floating in the air. It was so inhuman and beautiful and sad, and I knew I had to be in Devon’s bed. I looked to the left, but there was no one there. It hurt to move and turn my head, and I felt a horrible migraine coming on, but I turned over to the right anyway.

There he sat in his chair, the back of it facing me, him sitting backward, his feet off to the sides, and his arms crossed over the top back of the chair. His head rested on his forearms, and he looked tired. I really can’t remember saying it at all, in fact to this day I am convinced I did not say it, but Devon answered it anyway.

How?

“I bottomed out a couple years back, infested, drugs—you know the sort of trouble. I was never that type of guy, though it sure seemed like it. You would have been surprised how I changed,” his voice started off as monotone as when I met him outside earlier that night, but it started to crack and warp and soon his voice carried the same somber note as I last remembered it.

“I should have been there,” I said to him. “Come closer,” I requested. He got up and pushed his chair to the side.

“You were far away, it’s a good thing. If you were there I would have felt guilty, you know that. Even now I’m just making trouble for you,” he said, crawling up onto the bed and right up beside me.

“Tell me more.”

He sighed. “I was depressed. I thought it would make me well, somehow. Yes, I know I’m the preacher of all things logical. But I was well aware of what I was getting into, and at the time…” he sighed again, taking a deep breath inward and holding it in his chest for a moment. “At the time, if I had overdosed or died…it would have only been for me.” My heart dropped when I heard that. I touched his cheek softly.

“And, and I would have been able to move on if…if I just…if I just forgot about you…for one fucking moment, for one second of one day—It might not have gone that far. But I missed you, so it did. And…” he gave a sad, fleeting laugh, “well, I’ve been clean for 6 months, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I went to a doctor. And, well, there you have it—HIV positive. It wasn’t too long after that…hell, I don’t know what to say anymore. I’ve always had something to say, as long as I’ve existed, there’s always been something to say, some word or phrase to make this all disappear and go away. Tell me, did I seem perfect to you? Why did you love me?” he asked, tears welling up in his eyes again. Or maybe that was just me.

“Dear, I still do love you.” He licked my lips softly and kissed me again, not with passion but with a somber gratitude. And that’s when I knew Devon McDermott was God, a mortal God, a bleeding God. For reasons unknown to me or anyone, he came here. He healed my wounds, silenced my fears and solved my trivial problems, and I didn’t see that the person who I thought had everything, knew everything…was so un-uniquely mortal like the rest of us.

“If I never left you…” I started, “this would have all been so different.” He lay on top of me and took my hand in his and laid his head next to mine on the pillow.

“You left, Jonathan, but it was for the best. So fucking what if we were both beautiful paintings? I’d still be in an open field somewhere across the ocean, open and bruised. Look at you—you belong in Venice, you belong in Milan, in some gallery in Italy, preserved and safe. If you were with me, we’d both be two lost masterpieces in a world, a place, un-accepting and un-needing of it. Think about it. Where would we live? You wouldn’t have gone to NYU, you’d have stayed with me and worked the same dead-end minimum wage jobs I’ve worked and live in the same shit hole I live in. And for what? To be with me?” He paused and looked up at his ceiling, as if it were actually the night sky.

“I regret what I did in your stead, but I do not regret you not being with me,” Devon whispered into my ear again.

“Devon!” I cried. I shot up off the bed. “We can go to New York! Yes, you can come to New York and have the best doctors and you could stay with me and it would just be absolutely perfect and I—” but he covered my mouth before I could say anything more. He looked like he was about to laugh.

“Just…just go, Jon. It’s over. What’s gone is gone. I’m sure as I get weaker you’d love to have this social impediment hanging all over your beautiful Manhattan apartment. Oh, I can see it now: I’ll just make a fool of myself, coughing all over your neat furniture, having you take care of me when I get sicker and sicker until one morning you find me dead—”

“Don’t!” I yelled, grabbing his arms and trying to calm him, but it wasn’t working.

“right there, in your bed, and you’d have to call the morg—”

“Stop, stop it! STOP IT,” I cried, beating his chest softly but convincingly.

“And you, yes you, Jon, would have to set up the funeral arrangements because I have no one else and you know it!”

“STOP IT!” I yelled, “I hate you!” and flung myself into the depths of his bed sheets.

He left me there to think for a while, in his bed. I fell asleep and in the morning he made breakfast. We ate in silence and talked about nothing much, the night almost a vague memory now. I tried to convince him again to move in with me, but he dismissed my offer again. I felt broken hearted as I left him, and he told me to call only when I felt up to it, and not out of obligation.

We saw each other once or twice more—once at a mutual friend’s house, another time in late July to celebrate Nick Anderson’s christening. We didn’t speak at the church, or afterward. He was sick, and was pushed around in a wheelchair by a lady in a white uniform—a nurse, most likely. He saw me and smiled, and turned his head and looked away. He didn’t call me over or find any interest to talk to me, but knowing him it was just to make everything easier on me when he finally did leave me.

That was the last time I saw Devon McDermott alive.

I kept a promise I had made almost a year ago. Before I left back to the city that morning after Devon told me we couldn’t be together, he told me to open the gift after he died. Many times I was tempted to open it—especially in my hours of grief and despair. I knew our love was going to die with his passing, and I wanted so badly to prolong it that I thought breaking my promise was the only way to keep him alive, whatever that meant.

I let it sit on a shelf for months before I took it down that August. I sadly unwrapped it and found a crushed, matted lily under glass and surrounded by a wooden frame. At first, I was confused. But something was attached to the back of the frame that got my attention. It was a note!

I tore it off, eager and sad and about ready to cry.

Dear Jon,

This is the matted lily from when we first made love. It was on the bank and we were lying on the grass near the water and you said “How mature of us to do it near the beautiful water and not on my mom’s couch,” and I laughed at you and you hit me playfully and said to shut up. Then we both relaxed and I held you in my arms and when we looked out into the water we saw a bunch of lilies, but the most beautiful one was farther off from the shore and was just there, gleaming in the sun and you said, “That’s our love, Devon—beautiful, strong, and totally unique.” When we left, I came back that evening and rowed out to get it. I matted it and framed it and had it ever since, and now I’m giving our love back to you. I want you to know that as you read this, I am gone physically, but in reality, I’m right there in that flower. So put it by your bedside so I can look over at you while you sleep. I know you’re a busy guy so be sure to get a good night’s sleep and read a lot—in fact, read Whitman, it’ll remind you of me, just cause I mentioned it.

I want you to understand just how much I love you and how hard it was to send you away, and I did send you away, the first time round. I doubt I’m a prophet, or some angel or anything, despite how you think of me, but I love you, and I’ve always wanted you to do well for yourself. So please, don’t be sad for me, and it’s nothing you’ve done, because you were the one that showed me what love was in the first place, which is more than any guy could ask. God, I love you so much and I will ALWAYS be there for you and if you cry, I’ll know it and you’ll know that I’m there because I’ll just start to talk to you and confuse you like in “ye old days”. Heh.

I love you, get some rest tonight, and invite a few friends over in the morning. And then go to Six Flags. Or the Opera. Or whatever. Do whatever you want to do, and be happy for me. Live for me. Okay? Alright, no need to bore you to death. I’ve said what I’ve needed to say, now you go on.

Loving you forever,

Devon.

I fell to my knees and cried for hours on end, only afterwards to mock myself for being so silly. Devon had told me not to cry. And I shouldn’t. I should live and be happy.

But how could I live when he’s gone? The only way I survived the fallout before was by reminding myself that somewhere he was happy and healthy without me. I guess I just had to live with this.

But I couldn’t help but think, in the dark hours of the early morning, what it would be like to wake up curled against a warm body. Not just any warm body, but of a certain suburban boy called Devon McDermott. I would smile thinking of his smile, and weep a bit remembering his death. But what I felt most of all was the overwhelming grief and regret for having left him.

And I wondered if Devon McDermott was dead because of me.