You weren't there, April.
You weren't there when we got home from an amazing concert, one of the Well Hungarians' best yet, all four of us elated and alive. You weren't there to call out your name, and come to the conclusion that you must have already gone on to bed. You didn't go into the bathroom with the innocent intention of taking a piss only to stop still in your tracks by the unwelcoming, unexpected sight of blood mixed in with the by-then-cold water. You didn't stare at the still body sprawled out in your bathtub, gazing into the glazed, lifeless yet disturbingly hypnotic eyes that were open and haunting and ultimately tired.
You didn't have to worry about forgetting it, about that image flooding your mind every time you closed your eyes.
You didn't stare at the body for an eternity before noticing a scrap of paper on the sink, reading the ever-so-eloquent suicide note - "We've got AIDS." No further explanation, no apology, no "I love you," no signature, nothing but "we've got AIDS." You didn't stare at the note in disbelief for a few minutes before returning into the living room, the short letter still in hand. "April's dead," you didn't have to announce as a numbness you'd never felt before grips you. The looks of shocks, disbelief, anger, and indescribable pain take over your friends' faces, but emotion no longer register in you.
You didn't call to have the body removed. You didn't fill out the paperwork quietly in the corner while they stowed the corpse in a black body bag or talk to the police. You don't know what it's like to be going through that and not feel a single thing.
After you died, April, I cleaned the bathtub. You don't know what it's life to clean the little spatters of dried blood off the already-stained tiles, what it's like to realize with a sickening jolt that the blood on your hands, your clothes, and under your fingernails is the blood of your once-close friend. You don't know how badly blood stains, how it felt for me to have tints of your blood on my hands for days, no matter how hard I tried to wash it off. You weren't there at three o'clock in the morning when I was still on my knees on the bathroom floor, bleaching the bathtub as I heard sobs coming from the room next to me. You weren't there when I couldn't stop cleaning until Collins pulled me away, wrapping his arms around me and telling me I need to come away from it, that I'll be okay and I need to be strong. I just didn't know what to do. I just wanted to be able to cry.
You weren't there when Roger, the man you called the love of you life, eventually stopped crying and slowly became emotionally dead, numb and cold, even more than me. You weren't there the night he knocked on my door, speaking for the first time in a month to tell me that he didn't want to end up like you, that he was ready to give up the smack that you introduced him to in the first place and that he needed my help. You weren't there through the depression and withdrawal that consumed him and me, vicariously, for over a year before he began to adapt with a life without his two former obsessions - you and heroin.
You weren't there to see Roger absolutely broken. But you were the one who did that to him.
And for that, April, I honestly don't think I'll ever be able to forgive you.
Because you weren't there.