Platitudes

A friend of mine has died. It was an unexpected death, as so many of them are.

The people my age, the young ones, those who knew him well, they have few words for it.

“I found him there. He had been like that for a while.”

“I touched his arm, at the funeral. I was angry with him, but that wasn’t really him, whose arm I touched, was it? I said goodbye for you, since I knew you couldn’t be there.”

“He’s dead; how about that!”

The older ones, those who never knew him, they have platitudes.
“When someone dies, someone your age, unexpectedly, it’s shocking. You never expect that.”

I met my friend at a poetry reading, on my sixteenth birthday. For years, I had accidentally carried around a pack of poems my friend had written, in the back of an old notebook. I had always meant to return the poems to him. I would see my friend, in town, on occasion, and ask, “Did you know I still have those poems of yours” and “would you like me to return them to you?” I can still hear his voice, as it would sound, reading the poems. I cannot find the notebook they’re in. They are all I have of him, and they’re gone. The only thing left is the memory of a tone, and the memory of a tone fades.

He had a calm voice, a cadence part jazz part monotone, and the tone was nasal but deep. He spoke slowly but excitedly. He would occasionally get ahead of himself. He would nod when spoken to. I will never hear his voice again.