“May he rest in peace” was the extent of the eulogy. I could have said something grand, something that would have let them know how much I’m going to miss you, but instead, you get the classically lame closing line. It’s not what you deserve.

August is drizzling down around us like the finest of your whispers humming in our ears, and I’m the one wearing my heart on my sleeve while the rest of your flesh and blood hoard away their sentiment. I can feel their burrowing glowers jabbing at my optics. They think it’s my fault.

The distance between us is an ocean, the seven feet of condensed soil. Perhaps the rain is leaking through to you, the steady drip on the mahogany of your coffin. Those are your mourner’s tears - my tears.

Today I got myself out of bed early, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t call so you could witness the lackluster sunrise, the ring of your telephone like the first crow of daybreak in the dreary dawn. I’ll hear your voice no other time. August is swallowing me, consuming me like the hellhole that engulfed your car in a scorching inferno.

I’m a faded negative of the person I used to be, washed out by summer showers and stained by the grass that we crushed in the field. I’m still grimy from the dust on the road we took just to get away. You refused to stop and ask for directions, and I fell asleep against your jacket that night. Things ended there, and now your sleeves garnish my shoulders.

It is odd yet wonderful to think that tiny bits of you still cling to this jacket. It’s a new sort of embrace I’m still trying to get used to, yet I recognize it can’t ever be your equivalent.

The heavy rain is keeping a balanced cadence on the pavement around me, greening the cemetary’s grass. It’s driving down the erroneous road, just as we did. The black umbrellas are spires, spinning high in the presence of the winds. They’re like the steeples of Europe that we promised so many times we’d see. France, Germany, England and Scotland ... you’ll never see them, but I’ll take pictures and toss them to the breeze with the trust that your spirit will catch a fleeting glance.

The droning voice of the religious man before us is a soothing hum now, like the radiator in your apartment where we used to play video games and talk about forever.

Now I won’t drive myself into an eternity without you. I made it through the wasteland and you left me with nothing but a smoldering good-bye. All I’ve got to hold onto is your last anguished gaze. The faith that you had in life was merely a delusion, and you’ll never know how much I suffer for you. So, I’ll stand here and miss you more. Every spray of precipitation on my shoes is a mediocre good-bye and a kiss over the phone leaving me dejected.

The celebrant draws his words to an end, leaving your relatives affectionate because they think that you are better off missing from this world. I doubt I can go on devoid of you, and I don’t want to.

The rain sparked an electrical blaze in the rest of them.

All I am is wet.