Sauced up and high, I left the show just two songs into Twin Tribes’s set. Despite sharing the same date as your birthday, I’d been looking forward to this show for months. But now that I’m here, I feel nothing but out of place. The club is packed. All these people. Then me. I barely feel alive, and the parts that do still pulsate only do so out of some primal urge. I’m already dead. “Dead man walking.” The rest of this— this existence is just a formality. So here I am, and the band is halfway into “Heart & Feather” and I leave. Just like that. I walk up the stairs and leave Lou’s. I make my way to the waterfront. The bay is black and cold. With the tingling taste of salt on my tongue, I try to still myself so that I can feel you. Come on, boo, I say. We’d be out right now celebrating your birthday, so if you’re going to show yourself, tonight would be the night. I’m still. Everything is quiet. I don’t even hear the waves lapping the shore. But there is nothing. You aren’t here. You are gone. All of you. No residual energy. No strange light in the night. You’re never coming back, so why am I doing this again? It’s the thoughts— the intrusive thoughts are now accompanied by memory flashbacks. Unprovoked, I remember the last time we ate at The Shanty Cafe before it closed for the final time. The picture I took of you remains on my phone. You, grinning with a piece of bacon in your hand. And then it’s gone. And another flashback flutters my heart. I’ve been walking out here for nearly an hour. I want to go home and go to bed. That dark, lonely bed. On my way home I drive by The Shanty. It’s gone. All of it. They demolished it years ago and now, there’s nothing but rubble and twisted fence. And before I can shut if off, my mind envisions the building as it once was. And there we are, just inside the front door, enjoying one final breakfast at our beloved Shanty. It was a nice time. We were happy.
I’m home now. It’s nearly midnight, and I no longer feel sleepy. I’ll be up all night trying to find peace from your memory. I love you.