Leave Me Behind on the Horizon

Do we still stand under the same sky?

Photo by Natalya Letunova on Unsplash

The dead don’t speak, but we do watch.

I don’t remember the way I died. Most of us don’t. It’s too painful a thing to recall that one moment right before we breathed our last. And the ones who try to remember — well, theirs is a fate we don’t talk about.

But we do hold onto those times we cherished most. A baby’s first laugh, a stolen kiss beneath a willow tree, a sprint through empty city streets at 3 AM — these are the glimpses I remember most of my time on earth. The pieces are all there to concoct a puzzle that tells the story of my life.

Even so, most of us don’t want to remember a thing. It’s easier that way. You may think the living have trouble moving on, but the dead? We can stay in stasis for years upon years at a time if we’re not careful.

And those who won’t move on — well, they become the ghosts that haunt the realm of the living.

I haven’t gotten that far. I hope I never do. The wails they make — there’s nothing more chilling to hear. Imagine a battlefield crowded with the sounds of the wounded and displaced, and you’re halfway there.

The murkiness is what gets to me sometimes. Maybe we’re in a purgatory of some kind, this far shore on the horizon where the lost…