Flying.

She always was the first one to cross the finish line, so in a fucked up way it makes sense that it's her funeral we were there for. Rows of pews full of faces I'd never seen before, family from other cities and friends lost to the facade of adult life, all there to celebrate a life they'd barely even known.

I couldn't sleep unless she was next to me. Like that last drink before stumbling home, she gave darkness conclusion and my mind the gift of emptiness ...

But she had to find a way, none of this good enough for her. Ever. She had to escape to the broken hearted fringe of town where expired everything goes when paying respect to the vast darkness beyond. The ability to live 74 years in 6 minutes. To receive the end in the folded embrace of every winter night.

Now its November 2057, and the clouds how grown thick through the months of summer, we continue to ignore our own hands and the damage they produce. I still have her photograph, I still have her favorite books, journals, and the last letter she wrote to the man she always loved but never knew it, never read it.

She used to talk about what the city would be like if its people looked up from their digital interests, their false connections. It was beautiful, though I can hardly imagine it anymore. She would always say "we work together, but not directly, we love the world, but not directly. We fight for change without fighting at all. Nothing was ever changed by sitting still or being peaceful. Our lives are like water; individually we are only raindrops, falling alone and evaporating in a desert of self interest and misunderstanding... But together we can form rivers, oceans, bodies so powerful and organic that seasons of life will gather to celebrate our existence."

Why she died the way we all do, I don't know. Maybe she finally realized flying was possible somewhere else.