Allowance from a Friend

I was thinking about Ryan today. Thinking about what he would say to me right now, as I mope in my pajamas and try to write. On my kitchen table-turned-desk I have a stack of incoherent note cards, a grass-scented candle, and a handful of tea wrappers and tissues. The light sneaks from the palm spears outside my window onto my hands, which are exhausted of tapping on these exhausted keys.

I think of Ryan today and I remember what he told me in the ballpark, watching our team, the last day I saw him alive. He put his exhausted hand on my knee and said, “The sunny days are the hardest. On the sunny days you feel guilty for not being happy.” I held his frail hand as we watched the Tigers lose on the sunniest day game of the season. We tried to laugh, we tried to be kids, we tried to live up to what a sunny day deserves.

I think about what Ryan would say to me right now. I think he’d say that it’s okay to cry, and it’s okay to throw your exhausted hands up in defeat, and it’s okay to close the curtains, under one condition: that I promise to open them tomorrow. So I think that’s what I’m going to do, because sometimes the sunny days are the hardest.