Q1: Will the world stop turning?

A1: Absolutely not.

In fact, I think she might spin even quicker with one less name to weigh down a diary at night.

She’d command the Sun to rise up as always, leading & guiding us reckless children throughout the day, letting the Stars take a shift in teaching us how to dream at night.

There’d still be Places to Go and New Faces to Learn. Memorize Them until they fall into some kind of “Familiar” in the Accordion File Folders of the Soul.

No, no, the world would still find reason to turn, even without you.

Q2: Will you still have reason to live?

A2: Reason to live? Well no… Because, well, what is living anyway besides standing here with lungs that operate and a heart that beats so unreliably?

Living is for the boring creatures who think breathing is the kind of thing you scratch off the to-do list each day.

But I’d find reasons to wake up and place two feet down on the floor. If that’s what you are asking? Reason to walk outside and greet the people at the bakery, secretly imagining myself with all the pastry makers laughing, saying over breakfast croissants, “We found reason to get up today!”

I’d find the same old reasons to greet the doorman and say please when asking for the morning paper. I’d find reason to still stop and watch the street performers, wishing I could follow them when they close up their guitar cases at the end of a day. Watch them purchase pears & tobacco from the coins they get as gratitude for making angels come out the trees in Central Park. It takes a special kind of person to lure the angels out in Central Park. A special pair of lips, blessed to blow the heck out of a music note.

I can surely assure you, I’d still have reason to live, even without you.

Q3: Will you find another?

A3: Another? Another? An. Other? Oh absolutely. In no time. An. Other. On the street corner. An. Other. In the market.

Darling, you are not another to me.

If it were possible, I’d surely take the “O” and the “N” and the “E” from within that faceless word.

ONE.

That is what I think when your name comes up in conversation and I am suddenly stumbling over envy because someone had the chance to bring you up first.

One. None like you. Singular. Like the plural ran away, as street children run from the cops, the second you scrawled my first piece of homework at the top of a blank composition notebook.

We had August.

That’s what I always think. August: a month where I didn’t memorize a single vocabulary word. Though my mother hired you for that. But I memorized the Grooves in your Grin. The Lull in your Walk. The Way your Eyes Stayed on Me, Hours After Parting. They stayed like sweet cherry stains on my fingertips.

Yes, yes, I’d uncover One Million Others… but never the One that was You from that very first day.

Will the world still turn?

Will I still find reason to live?

Will I find another?

You’ve asked me three good questions. I think I’ve answered them well. Now answer me my one before you slip to the door with your suitcase packed tight:

Did staying ever cross your mind?