coda

"I believed all of your dreams are duration.
You took my heart and my keys and my patience.
You took my heart off my sleeve a decoration."

-- "Work" by Rihanna ft. Drake

I think back to that last day, when I looked at her. Really looked at her. Barely lucid. Cachexic. She reminded me of a sleeping animal, limbs curled up in a ball to contain warmth. I wondered, if we could see the time we had remaining imprinted on our chests like the boxy red numbers of a digital clock, whether her time would show days, weeks, or perhaps even another month. An emergency room doctor once told us we would all learn to hone and rely our "Spidey Senses" in the way that she just knew by looking at someone whether they would crash on her in any minute. I knew the girl was dying, but still it came as a surprise when I pulled up her record on Monday morning and discovered she was already gone.

If you can look at a girl like her and see that she is on the brink of death... could you do the same with someone dying from within?

I barely knew him. I knew his name and his face, but I couldn't remember which classes we had shared or if we had ever spoken to each other. I only found out he had taken his own life because a girl I knew had written about her memories of him in high school, and the post had appeared on my newsfeed this morning. Beautiful and aching. A kaleidoscope, pieces shifting into new patterns and sides of a person I never truly knew.