Pictures of You

i've been looking so long at these pictures of you

that I almost believe that they're real

i've been living so long with my pictures of you

that I almost believe that the pictures are

all I can feel

The song in my head kept repeating over and over again, the Muggle singer's voice haunting my thoughts and my dreams. I can remember one night a few weeks after it happened, in the middle of the night, and turning to see you there, in my Papasan chair. You were trying to find a comfortable position, laughing, but like you said before, it's impossible to be comfortable in that chair if walk upright and have a straight spine. It made me laugh for the first time since it happened. Then you vanished, and my smile did as well. I was alone again, in the dead of the night. Funny, that phrase. "Dead of the night". I feel like laughing bitterly, but it seems even that would take too much effort without you there to spark it.

"Crying for the death of your heart". That's what the Muggle singer said. I think that's what's happening to me. Since coming back from school, nobody here understands it. Mother and Dad are worried, but they can't see...can't see that I didn't just lose a friend. My heart isn't broken. It's not even shattered. It's dead. Completely dead. I have nothing left to break. When you died, my heart stopped beating too. God, I can't even say "dead" without my head hurting. Crying is behind me now. I have no tears left, just a dull headache whenever I think too hard about what happened. And that's all I seem to be doing.

remembering

you how you used to be

slow drowned

you were angels

so much more than everything

hold for the last time then slip away quietly

open my eyes

but I never see anything

Do you remember when we had that picnic on the lake? The autumn wind was soft and cool, not yet frigid with the early signs of winter. You just found out that you'd be the Gryffindor champion, along with Harry Potter. Everyone was angry, thinking that somehow Harry had done it himself, but you were so good, so trusting that he hadn't done anything dishonest. And I just smiled, basking in the glow of your beautiful soul...and now...now I wish I hadn't encouraged you to do it in the first place. You were too good for this world.......people like you don't belong on Earth. The pure soul is too innocent, too good....people like you either die young or lose faith too early. I suppose it was tragic from the beginning. You were just a star, a shooting star sweeping across the sky, making all those who saw you smile in amazement. But then you faded. It's like fucking Romeo and Juliet, except I forgot to die..........at least physically. Stupid me.

It seems people only get poetic when something bad happens in life. I couldn't stomach poetry in the least before it happened, but I'm suddenly a female tragically poetic Edgar Allan Poe. I've been stealing my sister Pia's CD's lately. She compensates for her Muggle fate by pretending to be a tortured soul, listening to Morrissey and the Cure, Muggle post-punk, poetic-pop-pioneers. I just know it helps. It helps to know that there are others besides me that feel as empty as I do. I could say that I feel like half of me is gone, that I've been torn in two...if I was feeling generically poetic. But that's not it. Half of me isn't gone. I've still got a physical body, I've still got hands feet arms legs arms but I'm completely empty. My vital organs have been sucked through my nose, like those mummies in Egypt. All that's left is a shell, a Jell-O mold with no jiggly orange left in it.

daylight licked me into shape

I must have been asleep for days
and moving lips to breathe his name

I opened up my eyes
and found myself alone alone

alone above a raging sea
that stole the only boy I loved
and drowned him deep inside of me

I can't seem to sleep much. Or any at all. If I do sleep, it's during the day, when I can't bear the sunlight for more than a few minutes on my way to the bathroom. I sleep for a few hours every day, never concurrently of course, but an hour here....an hour...there. As I'm writing this I just woke up, after about an hour of sleep. I can tell my writing is slow, sporadic....but I can't seem to fix it. My head doesn't want to stay up. It helps, though. Writing. That's what I do a lot nowadays. If I'm not thinking about you, I'm writing about you. Sometimes that's what wakes me up--I remember something wonderful about you, and I have to write it down. If I don't write it down, I might........might forget it. Might forget you. People are already starting to forget you. As if you were no big deal, as if the world didn't lose you. They'll never know how special you really were. Are. Sorry. You're still in my head, in my dreams. I relive it all in my head......it's wonderful until I wake up. I wake up alone. The only time I'm happy is when I'm asleep. And coincidentally, I can't ever sleep. I wish I could get all the thoughts out of my head. I haven't ever thought so much in my life. It's like the voices........your voice....my voice.......visions, the visions of our life....it's like they are attacking each other in my head, and after they're done the leave a blood bath and I have to put my blankets around my head to block out the pain.

Remember that joke mood ring I always wore on my pinky? Seems a Muggle upbringing dies hard. I knew it didn't have any real power, but I wore it because you liked it. You thought it was funny that it always stayed red...red meant "raving mad horny". Yeah. It didn't work............most of the time. It fit my mood every now and then, when you were all sweet and sweaty after Quidditch practice...then it worked. Well the mood ring changed colors. Now it's bright white. Strange. It came with a little booklet that explained all the different colors, and white wasn't an option. I just take it as another sign that you're giving me. I don't know what it means exactly, but it's comforting. You were always trying to help me, and I guess that didn't stop now that you're......somewhere else. I wear it on my ring finger now, but only in my room. I think my family would be concerned I'm nuts or something if I wore it around them. I think I should do that.........be all Billy Idol "White Wedding" and walk downstairs in a sheet, humming and rocking back and forth. Then I'd have to go to another stupid therapist, another professional to tell everyone but me that I'm crazy. No, Dr. whateverhernameis says I'm "transitioning". I don't care, as long as they leave me alone.

What is this letter about? I'm rambling. Incomplete thoughts. Without proper punctuation and sentence structure. Or a subject at all. Cedric, why did you do it? How could you leave.......leave me alone. This rambling needs to end. I'm making no sense. My head hurts. I need to go. Have I written anything worthwhile? Where is the subject? The conclusion? My conclusion is....nothing. This letter, this....life.....I need to wind it down, or I'll be writing shit forever. Shit....nothing....garbage. Expelling every ounce of my energy. If I don't get it out of my system, I'll...I don't know what'll happen. I'll explode. But I write, and nothing good comes out. Needs to end. End.....please....

however far away

i will always love you

however long i stay

i will always love you

whatever words i say

i will always love you

i will always love you