Dear Wally,
Wally, are you ready to die? Are you ready for that moment when you open your eyes and still see nothing? Will you be able to tell the difference between death's void and the coma's prison of slumber? Are you ready to say goodbye, to send your words away like wind from your stony lips? You can't say them, so I will write them down for you.
Goodbye to the sky that has always smiled down on you. Goodbye to the trees that drape you in their shadows on summer days and in the fall rain their autumn gold down on your forehead. Goodbye to the sun that scatters your hair with its burning jewels and flows warm across your skin. Goodbye to the grass, to the dew, to the morning breeze, to the earth, to the sand, to the water than you used to think would creep up in the night and suck you into its dark belly. Goodbye to the Kids Next Door.
You have to say goodbye to so many things, so many things that I didn't even think of until I wrote them.
Are you ready, Wally?
I'm not. I can't. I can't just let you go. Let you slip away where I can't ever see you again. Lose you to the darkness of the stale earth, your little body entombed under seas of rock and soil. Tumbled bones pressed into streams of trickling dust.
Thinking of your lost bones swamps my eyes with tears. You are a boy: living, breathing, and running strong, strong like the thundering tide. You with your bruised fingers and your diamond-fire eyes and the smile that sometimes creeps onto your face when you think that there is no one around to see it. You can't die, Wally. Not when you have so much to live for.
Love,
Kuki
