will the merciless cry for me? would you?

everyone else moved on, and i never got to see who i was supposed to become.

Jun 25, 2026

thin strips of flat wood line the floor, dark with dirt and dust pressed into the grooves from our shoes.

we’re in homeroom.

this building is probably hundreds of years older than me.
i’m supposed to be watching what’s on the screen,
everyone’s been talking about it for weeks —
corona virus 19.

“wouldn’t it be so funny if i got covid?” my good friend whispers, looking at me. she’s got shoulder length curls that bounce when she moves. she’s always smiling wide, like she’s never known hardship a day in her life.

ella was not the funniest girl i had ever met,
but i think she was the kindest.

i laugh, because at the time i wasn’t really afraid.
none of us were, i guess.

we were in the ninth grade.

the world was still something that happened somewhere else, to other people.
we didn’t fit inside of it just yet.

someone makes a joke about checking her for a fever, another says we shouldn’t make jokes —
i don’t care.
i’m not really listening anyways.

i’m waiting for the bell to ring,
tapping my foot gently —
listening to the way it pings.

i think back to this moment a lot.

some part of me detests the way that i never stayed in the moment.
regret distorts the room when i return to it — guilt wallows within me.
it thins the walls of my heart —

can you see me
bleeding?

what do you call life
if it does not contain the living?

the bell rings.
not like an actual bell — there was no bright brass chime of history.
just a monotoned dull, deep beep.
it reverberates in the chest, inside your head,
and then it ends —
an unoriginally normal tuesday.

we grab our bags.

“i’ll see you tomorrow,” she says.
i think she hugged me.
i can’t remember —

sometimes i can smell her perfume.
floral, like the petals you’d find in my grandma’s backyard.

— i’m already looking down the hallway.
i only have five minutes to get to the next place.
standing there already made me half late.
i nod, and we part ways.

but that’s the thing about tomorrows —
they never arrive in time.

what i mean to say is ours never came.

i wouldn’t call this freedom, no.
it smells too much like decay.

it’s not exactly rage.

perhaps
this is the aftermath.

sometimes i think it’s odd how much i remember about ella.
she was my best friend for a very brief amount of time.

i think there’s a kind of sadness that i will never heal from inside of her memory.
a kind of hope i lost.

we used to plan our summers together —
the sunsets that never arrived. pancakes at 2 am.
how she was going to tell the guy she’d dated for two weeks she loved him.

before christmas break she made me sugar cookies.
little lopsided circles with hand made snow flakes on top.

a handwritten note, a crimson bow —

it’s been six years.

it’s all gone now.

i stay fourteen
and the rest of the world rots —
she does not remember me anymore.

someone has taken my life from me.

everyone else moved on
and i never got to see
who i was supposed to become.

i don’t know who to blame.

but tomorrow,
i will begin to get things right.