I miss you, I miss you, I miss you. Please say you're watching.

Wherever you are, I hope you're hearing this now. Or reading this. Maybe you're allowed to get letters in Heaven, I don't know.

I just want to tell you something: we all miss you so, so much.

I told my therapist about these letters -- she says they're a healthy, if delayed, coping strategy.

So I'm going to try to keep writing. She says it's OK if I only write one or two lines, it's OK if I can't deal with my feelings about your death just yet.

She didn't say anything about if it was OK if I could only write that much because I couldn't put the feelings I'd sorted out into words.

So I hope you're OK with short letters for the time being.

They should have sent a poet.

You were close as breath that night:
No, you promised:
you would never leave me
alone.

Today she asked why I'd stopped writing to you. I said because you were dead, and you weren't going to get the letters anyway.

So she said that yes, of course you'd never get these letters. The point of them was to write them. For me.

And I told her maybe the only true thing I've ever told her: that it felt awful selfish to me, just doing something for my own good.

She laughed, and she said OK then, pretend you're writing him letters. And pretend there's some way for him to get them, if that's what gets you writing.

So when I'm done with all these letters, I am going to print them out and put them in an envelope, put all the proper postage on it, address it, and mail it.

Maybe it'll get to you.

Maybe it won't.

I tried poetry for a while, to reach you, and I think I left some up there in this document. But I won't scroll up to see if I did, because if I did I'll see what I've written before, and then I'll hate it, and delete it, and then I'll have to start again.

I'd rather write you nine thousand imperfect little telegrams than one long and perfect letter.

You know, I've kind of been thinking. About inner darkness, and all that crap. Wondering how evil I am, how evil we all are.

If you were evil at all.

Don't tell my therapist, but I don't think you were the one who was evil.

Everyone but you is changing.

I had a bad time of it a while ago -- OK, who cares, no one will ever read this

I had a manic episode a while ago. That's why I didn't write for so long. They're playing with my meds, considering switching me to a new one, fucking with the dosage, all that. You know the drill.

But you'd want to know happy news, wouldn't you?

Prescott's finally retiring. Maybe you'd be happy about that, I don't know.

Kyle and I are kind of dating again. I know, you'd want us to decide whether or not we were together

Sorry I kind of cut off. I hate talking about my personal life.

Elsa's started kindergarten, and stopped asking where you are.

Her therapist says this is good.

Mine won't say whether or not I'm making progress.

Sorry for another hiatus. I'm back in school again, woo. Finally saved up enough money. And I'm just gonna pretend this is the part where you write back saying how proud of me you are. That's OK though, that's what these letters are for. I think.

Came back "home" for Christmas. Didn't want to leave Roland alone with Elsa for another holiday, and I thought he might be getting a little lonely (hell, I was) -- and he thought she should see more of her Uncle Reilly now that he's more stable.

Do you agree?

Back in school again, trying to think more about how I feel. Seeing a different therapist, that's why.

Hope this letter finds you well, ha.

Exams. Fiddling with my meds again; stress can trigger relapses.

Was wondering if something like this ever happened to you.

Wasn't in any of my textbooks, that's for sure.

Off new meds, back on old ones. Passed my exams. Called Kyle and Roland to tell them that. Kyle wouldn't pick up.

Is that significant, or was he just busy?

Old meds don't work so well anymore. Tolerance? Haven't told anyone but you. Ssh.

I've finally found a combo of meds that works, and I'm all back on track with everything.

Like you care, though.

It's been a year since I started writing these, and my therapist is making me give her a copy.

Wish me luck. Hope I didn't write anything too incriminating, ha ha ha.

I'll bet you were dying to know what she thought.

Not enough detail. I'm not really digging at what I feel. I'm just writing pleasant little notes to someone I used to know.

I didn't tell her that's just what I was doing. What I am doing.

But she found out. Is she watching me? She asked me to write in more detail.

I don't want to. It's all in the past anyway and so are you.

She gave me an assignment.

What is this, middle school?

Sorry. I keep breaking the rules and erasing what I've written. None of it's good enough. Neither am I, come to think of it.

Ten Things I Could Not Do
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10. Save you

I'm not used to being inarticulate.

She says to write what I remember, and what I remember is this: emotions I don't have the words to describe, words I don't have the strength to record.

And she says that though that may be, I'm the only one left who can write it down.

That isn't true.

You were there.

The dead have perfect recall.

Such a stupid trick, but it worked on me, didn't it.

So this is what I remember, and it's probably inaccurate, but you don't care and neither do I because the truth is in the eye of the beholder and the beholder has gone off his medication to write this, so it had damn well better be good.

Even the memory of you is transitory -- and the memory of me is heavy as lead, unable to move, unable to change a thing. (And that's OK, because memories are things of the past, and so are we.)

So all I can do is watch you and watch her, from my hiding place

(behind the chemical sheds)

behind the Animal Testing building, and I suppress a little nervous giggle, because it occurs to me that it's a little bit ironic. Or maybe a lot. I'm stoned out of my mind on adrenaline and paralyzed by something I'm going to call fate.

She's angry, and I wish she had your calm, because then I wouldn't have to hear her say:

"You killed them."

And I wish, I wish, I wish that things could turn out differently, but all I can do is watch in the silence of someone forced into being a witness. (Because all my life I've been a witness. I am never a main player.)

"Max," you say, from a throat that must be dry as bone (because mine is, from adrenaline and dry desert summer wind).

And it is very nearly the last thing you get to say.

"It wasn't me," you say, and it's fruitless as the fig tree Jesus cursed vindictively, because I see what you've already known (and again I'm the stupid one, last to know something bitterly obvious).

Max has a gun (and I remember your story about giving Omega his first gun, your stupid second-hand story as vivid as my own memories: "Wow, thanks" and from the way you described it he looked like any other kid on Christmas), and God curse the man who taught her to aim it.

But she can't aim it, because the first shot goes wild, and I hit the ground, heart hammering, because I am insanely sure she was aiming for me.

"Your name was on all the documents," she says, voice shaking, and suddenly she sounds like any other woman her age, and I think for a moment Oh what have we done. "Your signature. Your name. It was you."

"Max, please understand," you say. "I did it for you."

"You killed my family for me?" She laughs, and this time I can't help a little nervous giggle, anticipating whatever's to come: the little I know of her is how good she is at this. "How sweet."

"No," you say, and it's like you know what's coming next, because you say, "You have to forgive me"

And Max's aim, this time, is true.

Before I can do anything, I'm ineffectual as always and you're gone.

She kicks your corpse once, checking with customary efficiency to be sure a fallen enemy is gone, and then she vanishes from sight -- before I can try to follow her with my eyes I'm at your side, trying to find a pulse and failing and no, this can't be happening, not to me, not to you, not to me and you.

Someone gently leads me away, and the firm no-nonsense hand on my arm reminds me you're no longer there

"Oh Christ" I say in a voice that's not mine

and that's where the memory ends.

I hope you're happy.

I went off my meds. For you.

And I felt so emptied out when I finished it up.

My therapist says I can be done now.

So I'm going to fulfill that promise I made.

I'm going to mail this to you.

Every last letter I wrote, all these broken telegrams.

And if it doesn't get to you -- if this comes back saying "return to sender" -- I think I'll understand. I am the slow one, always the last to "get it", but I think then I'll understand.

I was never too good at any of this, but I think that's all it'll take to make it plain to me at last: proof that you're gone.

So I'm not afraid to write this now. If I ever was afraid in the first place.

I love you. Write back soon.

Reilly.