She specifically requested no black.
We always joked about the ways we wanted to go, the ways we wanted to be remembered, and the ways we wanted people to act at our final sendoff.
Yet, I am the only yellow spot in a sea of black.
I’ll try to make it brief because she always said I talked too much. I ranted and raved so much that it’s a wonder she ever got a word in. I remember how many of her thoughts I must have missed in trying to keep the silence from—
No. Enough.
There are at least yellow flowers surrounding a urn and a picture of her smiling face. She was quiet but the world paid attention when she smiled. Her mother is wearing green and her father is in a suit, always following some traditions, no matter the situation.
They asked me to speak when I don’t ever want to talk again. I haven’t since they told me what happened. It’s been three weeks and I still don’t feel the slightest inclination to say anything that crosses my mind. Was that what it was like for her? When the world, me included, never stopped long enough for her to say a damn thing, did it feel like this? Did it feel like no one would shut up?
I do understand, to some extent. I don’t want to, but I do. We both had the line of pills and therapists and psychiatrists and the scars that have never gone away. We were both broken long before we could do anything normal like fall in love.
“Are you okay?”
“No.”
“Will you be okay?”
“I don’t know.”
Those words were often switched up. They didn’t belong to me and they didn’t belong to her. We were opposites, operating like clockwork.
Shut up.
“Dearly beloved—“
Shut up.
“She is at peace—“
Shut up.
They keep going though. As I silently will silence, people are getting up and taking turns to talk about her. Even the class president steps up to the stand, even though I know she doesn’t know her or didn’t know her. I don’t know.
It’s been surreal ever since she died.
“She was a great friend—“
Shut up.
Yellow flowers, yellow dress, a black wave of everyone that wasn’t there for her before, Christ nailed to a cross reminding us of her Cardinal sin, her murder of the person most precious to me—
Shut up.
“SHUT UP!” I stand up and scream.
Everyone turns towards me and I know I can’t stay here. I won’t believe. I can’t believe in a God that would condemn her to Hell for just wanting a break from the pain that I didn’t know how to relieve. I stand outside the Cathedral. It's amazing that they even let her family hold the service there. Outside, a boy who loved her has a flask.
"I could hear you from out here."
I nod. Apparently words will continue to fail me.
“—CAN’T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND LISTEN FOR A MOMENT?” Her voice on the other end of the line was hysterical.
“—Look—“
She hung up on me and shoved enough pills down her throat to make it last.
“I love you.”
In everything I ever said, I never once said those three God damned words. I don’t think they would have made a difference but—
Shut up.
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