3/21/25, 7pm—dada,
these days, I've been missing you a lot more. i talk about you more to people at work, and i wonder what they would've thought about everything i said if they didn't know you were gone.
hannah once thought you were still alive, just by virtue of how i talked about you—in the present, breathing you in and out with my stories, my memories, giving you a space to exist in the same school you went to. but the walls were different, a new building. your face in another. not too far from real life, where you're as far as you're near, alive as you're not.
i don't think i can forget her shock then, in that classroom right as our class ended. she had colored hair then, short. eyes wide behind her glasses, bags in hand, voice so small and taken aback: "your dad is dead?"
only then did i realize i never told her you were at all. and only then did she know—and say, how i talked about you gave no room for her to think so.
it's hard to not notice then how i talked about you. even now, it's the same.
at work, everyone knows you're gone. i mention it when i talk about you. i wonder if they'd know if i didn't. the present tense is default, switching to past feels both normal and strange. it's been a decade, and still, i struggle.
i know i talk shit about you sometimes, i know not everything sounds great to those who listen. yet with my stories alone, with no photo to your name, your existence, they know i love. i am fond. i feel.
i only wish you could see it.
im going on a walk in a few. i live in a place with more people now, less grass. more life, less living, but we try. i used to go out then too, and you'd welcome me home, barely moved from the bed, or maybe the chair or sofa.
i know living where i do, you wouldn't be here. it's why I'm here after all. still, i hoped i could at least see you in a different place after my walk, waiting like before.
i miss you. i missed you then. I'll leave for my walk in a few. I'll still be missing you then. I'm not sure i know how to stop that.
good night, wabu, hagee.