After she died, I found myself in a world of ash and steel.
I broke into abandoned transmission rooms and listened for
her voice between dead frequencies. I walked every road we had ever taken
together.
Sometimes I
thought I heard her voice beneath the static.
I knew it
wasn’t her.
I listened anyway.
The faithful
told me she was somewhere better. The officials told me the matter was closed.
My supervisor told me I was expected back at work on Monday.
Everyone had an
answer ready.
None of them
had her.
I carved her name into a piece of stone until my fingers bled. I thought pain might make me feel closer to her. It didn’t. It only left blood between the letters.
Nothing could remove what she had put inside me. But that kind of devotion is useless at three in the morning. It doesn’t warm the other side of the bed. It doesn’t answer when you speak into the dark.
There were
nights when I wanted to follow her.
I came close.
But grief is selfish. It wouldn’t let me die before I had done something with it.
Eventually I found others carrying the same kind of emptiness. Workers thrown away after the machines broke their bodies. Lovers whose names had been erased from official records. Sons and daughters raised on promises nobody intended to keep.
They wore
different scars and they recognised mine.
We were just
people making enough noise to get through another night.
Together, we built instruments from the remains of the
factories that had consumed us. We turned steel into rhythm, pressure into
sound and mourning into a signal.
The machines had taken her breath.
So I forced the machines to carry her name.
Sincerely yours,
Jon Grinmaster
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