letters to fay // z.m.

07

dear fay,

remember that ice cream shop where you told me you had a sister who had passed away?

it's been several days since i went to your house, so i decided to go somewhere today. i went to that ice cream shop.

there was a family of four sitting in the booth where you told me about amelia. it was a mother, father, and two daughters. they looked happy.

i ordered a chocolate marshmallow milkshake, your favorite. i wonder what you are doing today--on october nineteenth, at 11 am. are you scuba diving at the great reef? talking with someone in another language? are you on a plane? stuck in a bus during a thunder storm?

"i had a sister once...i was really little when she died. she died of leukemia," you told me that day, just a few months ago after i asked you about your family. "her name was amelia."

i didn't tell you i was sorry for your loss, i knew how it felt when people kept telling you that over and over. fay, i never told you but i was very close to my grandfather, who passed away when i was young as well. instead of saying i was sorry, i asked you, "do you remember her?"

you brightened up at that, your eyes sparkling with memories. "i have one memory of her--it replays in my head every day. i remember about a month before she died, she came into my room excited, it was her birthday i think, and she gave me a piggy back ride downstairs. then, that afternoon we went to a water park, and she spent the whole time with me--mom and dad offered for her to have some friends along, but she wanted to be with me." you smiled before sipping your milkshake. "she spent her last birthday..her twelfth birthday...with me."

i cried again today. in that small ice cream shop where the walls are covered in black and white pictures of old singers. i cried while sipping my chocolate marshmallow milkshake at a booth in the corner. i cried because i miss you, and because the jazz song on the radio was the same song that played when you told me about your sister.

sometimes i think that these kind of things are no coincidence. sometimes i think the world is out to get me. it's shouting and shouting again and again that i couldn't see the signs. i couldn't see that you were going to leave me.

fay, wherever you are, do they have better chocolate marshmallow shakes than they do here? you told me that day that this place made your absolute favorite ice cream. is it still your favorite? will you come back for it?

will you come back for me?

-z