where

I find myself at times thinking back to friends in my past who never visited their twenties; those who remain in the throes of youth, and gone beyond the reaches of life in the here and the now. So many ways that they left, under so many different circumstances. I wonder at what they must know; how they must laugh at our foibles and how they must long to join in at times, to feel the grass, the sun, the disappointment that comes from day to day life.

I still feel the loss: even after all this time I feel the burden of hesitation in making new friends and the bitter irony of feeling the need to say things I feel just in case I don't get the chance to say them again. I fear shadows that exist nowhere else but in my mind, faces through decades that linger faintly, lost to us in myriad of ways. I hope that they have found peace; I wonder if they believe that it would be better to be living. I wonder if they even give us a second thought.

They have been relieved of an uncertain future, removed from mistakes and pain and failure and self doubt and indecision and emptiness. I don't know if they still feel longing, but I hope there is still that in the afterlife. I hope I never lose the sensation of longing in my life; I hope that, living or dead, that there is always, always, always the yearning to reach out to the sun and feel its warmth on our faces and the earth beneath our feet. I hope that the the lust for life is a longing never fulfilled, but always evolving. I hope that, through their memory, those that have passed can teach us a thing about accepting life on its terms and learning to live- to really feel the yearning for living and feeling. To feel the joy that is ours, in all its capacity.

I miss them, and hope that they share a good laugh, or maybe a smile at my expense at times. I hope that maybe, in each of us, they remember what it was to once be alive.