A Passing

A shadow rolls across the valley, slow and ruthless. A radial glow casts my eyes up to the mountains, those desolate, steady peaks. A wisp of a cloud meanders across an absolutely empty sky. A layer of smoke lay flat like a blanket, seeping into my lungs.

My lungs, breathing, heaving, alive. That subtle wave, cresting and receding — reminds me that I'm still here, in this body, while you are not. We are not prompted to consider such autonomic functions until shocked by their cessation.

Where did you go? What happened? Today I grasped for all the disparate shreds of you I could find: a podcast, a DM thread, a book we read together, a casual email sent.

Like a detective, I piece together a collage of what you meant to me, and I to you. Stories only I carry now.

What happens to the shadow self? The musings shared with the internet, the profiles created and curated, the discord servers and slack threads — all with your little avatar, still smiling.

I think of the deep digital eddies and creeks where your shadow self still lurks. Little pulses of your psyche imprinted into binary mycelium. It takes a living person to seek those places out, and all the sudden you are alive again for an instant, a flash, a tweet, a snap, a hiccup in the continuum between our cosmic and internet selves.

The alternate reality already exists. You, bifurcated by miniscule urges where you decided to share. Thereby codifying your existence in the pit of the valley. I stand agape at the harsh parallels: the corpeal and digital self. The disparity made apparent, split open like a sunset across the clouds — floating, glowing, dreamy and then dark.