Eulogies: #1

It's like being in someone's room after they're gone.

At first it looks the same: same curtains, same bedspread, same rug; the pictures on the wall haven't changed, and there are still books on the shelves,

but there's no sense of presence, no half-empty water glass with smudged fingerprints on it, none of the books sits on the nightstand with an envelope stuck in it for a bookmark, the bed hasn't been unmade, the curtains haven't been opened, or closed; there's an emptiness you can feel before you can see or name it.

It's that.

You stand by the shoreline with your feet in the water, and the moon still pulls the waves back and forth, the salt spray still fills your nose, and between your toes there's still sand,

but the tidepools are not the busy places they once were, and the waves wash in more and more dead seaweed, and when you take yourself out to where the water is a little deeper and pick up your feet so that you are really in the ocean and no longer on the land, you find that you are floating in an empty room.