residue raze i had a dream you died and left me enough money to live on for about a year if i was lucky. and all things considered, my luck's been pretty good. i saw your face. i knew you weren't there anymore, but i couldn't stop seeing you. i didn't want to. i knew i wasn't going to use that money to pay rent or buy food. i had to use it to help you die in a way that would keep you alive. a funeral and a casket and a burial plot and a depressing ceremony would probably take everything i had. you wouldn't want that anyway. you wouldn't want people who never cared about you in life edging closer in death, propping themselves up on the box that was your last bed, taking pictures with their cell phones so they could show all their friends what they did with their day. you wouldn't want chemicals swirling where blood used to be. your eyes bolted shut with dimpled plastic hemispheres. i could get away with spending less if i had you cremated and kept your ashes close to me. but the thought of a stranger easing you into the fire made me sick. how could i talk to charred bits of bone in a vase with a narrow neck and tell myself i was talking to you? how does anyone live through the death of someone they love? how do you survive that? let me die first, so i don't have to find out. 220315 what's it to you? who go blather from