The Theatre of the Dead

It's been three and a half months since my aunt, Patricia, passed away. It still crosses my mind everyday, or on most days. I suppose it will for a long time to come. Sometimes I sit in my writing chair, deflated, and imagine an empty theatre being filled with faces of those who have passed. Strangers who vanished long ago. Familiar presences - maybe someone else from my family, or another friend? - who are yet to die. The faces belong to different people. Yet they are monotonous like light masks that spring up across the velvet seats.

They will start to fill the theatre long before they die because, like me, they are watching this space long before death rings in their mind. I'm there, too; I must be one of those glowing drones. Sometimes I get confused. How can I be watching my real self in another world from where I am now--which is, obviously, a makeshift stage? Where I'm constantly putting bits and pieces of myself together. As if I could convince myself that it all mattered when it didn't. No, I'm shattered skin glued back together. Some kind of doll.

***

Life is very dull, and we miss the people who made us feel we were the persons we thought we were. There's this person I miss, who died about two years ago. We weren't even close. But then, ever since he disappeared, I'd think of his face and his words from time to time, and they'd crawl up and down my arms. Or they'd be rain fingers breaking against my windows. I feared for him, for his vulnerability. Now I fear for myself, for all that is masked and shoved underneath the skin. Nothing is more absurd than this kind of pantomime! 

There's this other friend I miss, too. We used to be good friends--who rarely saw each other--when he lived here. Then he moved. I saw him last Christmas when he was back in town. He's a journalist. Ambitious and talented. Loves books. We have been lovers. At times I'll remember our conversations in a bar and try to think, Damnit! If he's doing what he does now, there's no reason why I'm not doing what I want to be doing! But the truth is he's moved on to do what he wants to do, and I'm swimming in a sea of cunts. This makes me want to wipe his face off my memories. Or the memories of us being close and that he, or we, must have imagined the two of us in the same raft, with our passion for words, literature, and all the things that save the human brains from dissolving.

***

Being good to others is easy. It really is. I have little problem tending to others' situations and feelings--I almost always understand. I don't have much of a problem asking for help either, if I need any. But I don't rip myself open to see what's wrong. Or do I do that all the time until my veins bulge with air? There's no telling what's that metallic taste in one's mouth, or heart.