the space above my ears.

The Ghost of Christmas Future

You said you wanted me to show you what it would look like if you were never born,

If we were dealt a hand of cards that didn't have your smile on any of them.

I don't want to go there, you know I don't, but here it is.

On the first side, from the first perspective, there's a little boy and he looks exactly like you.

I suppose maybe he is a little taller, maybe with a little more hazel in his eyes, but the resemblance is there.

He's holding up the sky alone.

The bullets you took for him, you didn't take, and he had to pull them out of his flesh alone.

It's him and two cretins and you are not there so the walls are closing in on him and he cannot hold them back on his own.

The second perspective is different.

A girl this time.

I know you don't like talking about it, but I brought you here for a reason.

She never learned love.

In this future, she never felt the feeling of being saved, so she never sought it out again.

She accepted what she saw, not what she wanted and she is missing so many more pieces.

I suppose this piece belongs to both of us, though, the second half.

It's a room and it's dark and it's full of empty bodies.

Two figures are passed out on the couch using old t-shirts as pillowcases because all the others have makeup and vomit stains all over them.

The floor is red, almost brown from years of dirt accumulating, unaddressed.

The whole place smells like sweat, drugs, and mildew.

Moving on.

We go to three funerals, three coffins being lowered into the ground on separate dates.

There is very little to this part aside from all the wasted potential, I tell you.

It hurts you to hear it.

You weren't there to shoo the mice away, so they chewed through the electrical cords, the spinal cords too.

The lights went out.

I wish I had the time to show you all the smiles that wouldn't have appeared had you not been there, but we don't have the time.

So many worlds would be husks of what they had the capability to be, all because they didn't have the light of your mind and your mouth and your hands and your hugs.

You are not only loved, you are needed.

So wake up in the morning not a changed person, but someone with a new conviction that they are enough.

More than enough.