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One day, they tell you - if you live long enough, though no one can give you a clear estimate of how long that is - you might go an entire day without thinking his name.
You will wake up, and kiss your wife, and spend your time at work or at church, and only later will you remember that you forgot to prod the wound he left behind. And when you do prod it - afraid that it is still there and somehow more afraid that it is gone - the sting will be a little less, and the fondness a little more.
Apparently - and to achieve this feat, you would need to live a good, long, distracting life - you might even go a week without seeing him trapped deep underground in that small box that the family who knew him least put him in, instead of burning him up under the night sky that he loved so much.
That knot in your chest - the yearning to dig his bones up, to free him - will unravel. In time. In time.
And then one day you’ll have a moment of unspoiled pleasure or amusement, and you won’t instantly feel guilty about it - guilty because he’s dead and he’ll never laugh again, and because he took two thirds of your heart with him, so you shouldn’t be able to either.
Perhaps there will be a time when someone will call his name - well, not his, just the name he borrowed from his grandfather - and the least rational part of your brain won’t leap up and ask, ‘Could it be him?’ And without that futile burst of stupid hope, there won’t be that devastating crash, and that will be a better day.
And perhaps one day, if the stars align just so, you will resolve that long-unanswered question - did he read your last letter? Maybe it will return by the post, undelivered - unlikely, because who would bother to do such a thing? - or perhaps it will turn up in his belongings and some kind sister will send it back to you, the seal broken by his hand, pretending she hasn’t read it. Then at last you will know whether he ignored your counsel - and then you can blame yourself for being less persuasive than you ought to have been - or whether he did not receive it in time and - well! - surely the blame for delays in the postal service cannot be laid at your feet.
That this will only lead to more questions… You will deal with it, if that time ever comes. Alone, because no one will understand why it matters - just some dead boy whose corpse you can’t lay to rest.
Oh! There is no one who will ever kiss you like he did - a man who kissed like each time was the first and the last - but perhaps in time other kisses will satisfy you, just a little.
There is no one who will ever smell like him - a man who smelled like sunlight and dust - but perhaps you will wake up beside another body whose warm scent will soothe you, just a little.
There is no tongue that will lick and roll and caress your name like his did - that charming mongrel accent of colonial and continental.
There is no hand that will--
No eye--
No heart--
Apparently, this pain will fade! In time! So they tell you!
But how long a life will you need to live that your throat will forget the graze of his fingertips? That your sleeping back will forget the press of his chest?
You see now that they must never have felt a love - a dread - so consuming, or else they would not lie to you about time and healing. Your wounds need more than time. They need him, and he is--
He is--
The grief refuses to wear away but, one day, too soon, the last of his smell will fade from the shirt you borrowed from him and forgot to return. It’s mostly gone already; you live in terror of it being laundered by accident, so you hide it. Ration your touches, because each one steals time from the one thing you wish time would not touch.
There’s a little part right at the cuff where he stitched a tear in the fabric together with his own hands. It’s proof that he existed, lived, when sometimes it feels like he’s only ever been dead.
You should burn the shirt, you sometimes think, in your stronger moments. Be his psychopomp. Send one part of him up into the night sky where he belongs, freer than this world ever let him be. To join the stars, no longer to fight them.
You should burn it.
Maybe.
One day.
When your fingers can unclench from it for long enough to strike the match.