I suppose I hope you’re laughing at me right now, thinking this makes any kind of difference.

I’m aware you know about grief and loss, that you learned this long ago, in middle school, when your boyfriend died in the towers. (Not that we ever talked about it … Lloyd told me.) Sometimes I think it’s one of the cruellest things, when someone grieving is surrounded only by those who didn’t know the person who’s gone.

Without anchors, grief dissolves in the brain like salt in water, invisible and unremovable, silent and interwoven. Example: I have a photo of you on my wall. It’s clearly from high school. You’re laughing in a crowded kitchen, but the house doesn’t look familiar. Lloyd is the only other identifiable person in the picture, and he’s looking at whoever you’re looking at, but that’s all the clues. There’s no one in my life right now who could help make this picture make sense, or who would bond with me over its guesswork. Regardless, anyone from those days would agree: this picture of you is perfect. Your laugh that was joy-filled and pissy and blade-sharp, unmimickable by anyone. I can imagine showing this picture now to the guys from back then, and to all of them, the sound of your laugh would be crystalline. But if I said any of this to a stranger, to even the kindest, most interested stranger, there’s nothing I could truly get across. It would fall apart as I was speaking, in the way of memories after dreams.

I’m still in Canada. In a small city right across the border from Detroit. I forget if I was here last time we talked, but I’ve been here a few years. It’s all right. It’s the Rust Belt, but it’s also easy to exist; that’s the shortest way I can explain this town. I work for a publishing company in the artsy district. I sold my car and got a nice apartment that’s quiet and safe. I like to bus to work in the mornings, and then walk home in the evenings. Evenings, for me, have always been harder than mornings. In normal times, that’s not so bad—I’m an adult with a good job; I have the resources to pursue the quotidian ways one makes an evening easier in the twenty-first century. I do like my evening walks. The riverfront is nice and the Detroit skyline is beautiful. Sometimes I stop in at Villains for a drink on the way. I feel whatever about drinking, but I like bars. I like to sit and read and nurse one and linger.

That’s not happening right now with pandemic life, obviously. Right now, everything is so dark I can barely talk about it. If the future holds anything normal, I could see myself becoming a good-natured old hag with a permanent seat at the bar who no one ever sees tipsy. I like the karaoke at Villains on Sundays, too. And, I swear, that place is the only joint in this town that doesn’t always have on just sports.