Requiem

Image by Geoffroy Hauwen

There are many people I wish to talk to, but they are not here, anymore.  So, I sit in their silence, which is mine.  Silence is not filled with memories of them unless I allow myself to decline into nostalgia, or worse, remorse.  Decline is descent into depression. I renounce that and reject the want (need?) to do that. So I sit, strangely rejuvenated by wanting to talk to them, knowing that if I do, they shall not answer.   This is good.  My knowing – and acknowledgment! – that they will not answer affirms them. And me.  Perhaps this affirmation is a form of memory; indeed it is, not with actual recollection of events and places they occurred, and never their faces. Silence is its own recall, a present presence unadorned.  This also holds true for those still living whom I do not wish to speak to ever again. They reside in the same silence. Silence is a great equalizer.