Everyone looks better in a black suit. I distinctly remember thinking it first this morning when getting ready, trying for about the 5th time to get the tie tied to the right length, and now it won’t get out of my head. It’s like a song that keeps repeating, but it’s just that thought, ringing like tinnitus, boiling my brain in its own juices. I look around at everyone else. There’s a lot of sniffling, and some dainty dabbing of eyes. No one’s broken out bawling, yet. I well up a bit, but it’s purely empathetic. I don’t feel anything at all. There’s nothing even in the box in front of us. It’s just a box.

The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry.

After the service, we’re waiting for the bus to come and take us back into town. We talk about something, hell, I don’t even bother to process what. “It was beautiful,” probably. Lip service. There’s probably a questioning of why these sorts of things happen. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a wishing well next to the little shop that had cropped up next to the bus stop. I’m not really thinking about suits anymore, but something I’d heard earlier.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

I’m standing by the well. The coin I’d flicked in flutters lazily to the bottom. Already the exact wording of the wish I’d thrown together and uttered under my breath is fading. I look at you. You look away.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.

I tossed the bags on the couch, thinking I’d unpack them later. We went about our routines. Nothing had changed. Like the tides, we still came and went, not noting the passing of one of our number as it rolled back out to the sea. We’re all crashing up on the shore, and we’re all getting dragged back out. Later on, when the tears finally came, I cried alone. You never even knew it had happened. I wonder if you did the same, but we haven’t talked.

What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds.

A month later, I heard you. A little noise, a faint gasp. I looked at you and knew, and you reached out and put your hand on mine. The wind rustled outside, and I thought about that coin. I thought about the scripture that I’d heard, and the book I’d been reading on the way over when you’d fallen asleep and your head accidentally drifted onto my shoulder for a moment. I remembered, and I saw your eyes, and I believed once again that we can make it.