we breathe our toxins and down our poisons [mylee]

I had asked my mother why our family still set a place for Wyatt at the table. She tells me that this is due respect and I say that we never respected him before and doing so now seems disrespectful and she can only respond by laying a hand across my cheek in the space of a second.

My tongue has found its way to my cheek and is now taking up residence there. It has decided that it wants to be involved in something, wants to help someone even if it is only to the count of three.

I spit at her feet and walk out the front door.

I am a girl determined to show respect even if the motivation is wrong, and it strikes me that this may strip the action of its meaning, but at this point, I am simply looking for an out.

Simply looking for another way to recreate myself in the loss of him.

It is not the case that I am truly changed by the loss of Wyatt O’Connor. Rather, I believe I feel obligated to mourn him because this is what you are supposed to do when the namesake is lost to the grave.

So the grave, his home, is where I find myself in the last hours of daylight. I stand over him and will myself to feel some sort of grief— any sort of sorrow is welcome to seep into these bones.

But the sorrow is absent in the wind and so am I, and as I turn to leave a voice deeper than his catches my ear and asks me for help in a place where all is lost. I give him a look of disapproval first and questioning second, “What kind of person smokes in a graveyard?”