home going

i know the holy spirit was in inglewood today because everyone said so, but i couldn’t feel it. the pastor wore skinny jeans. his face was on a big banner hanging outside the church. he said he could go to hell for what he did last thursday but won’t because he’s saved. he didn’t explain what he meant by that, but i assumed it had something to do with the sort of sexy blonde woman pressed against his cheek on a poster in the foyer. i didn’t see her in the room, though. whatever. he said your mission was complete and that god knew from the moment he created the earth that you were going to die at 21. i don’t understand.

if heaven is so much more wonderful and freeing than earth, why aren’t we all trying to die all the time? he made it sound like you got lucky. no one but me thought it was funny that he kept saying the word drive during the sermon even though you died in a car. being in a car lately kind of feels like holding an AR-15. they kept you on ice for a month. jews get it over with much faster, but our songs aren’t as good. i wonder what you looked like in there, how they stitched you back together. we skipped the viewing and went to the beach. i hope you were in your prom suit. it was a hundred degrees out today and i wore a fucking turtleneck. the girls from our dance class laughed when i said that south la heat is different. i don’t even know if that’s true.

everybody’s faces were covered in little white crumbs from the one ply tissues the staff gave us. i crumpled mine up and put it in my pocket. i hit my vape through my sleeve like a jackass. on the street corner, a church employee in a purple polo shirt popped her airpods in and laughed boisterously on the phone, shuffling her feet back and forth and back and forth. life goes on somehow. it’s friday, i have a show tonight. i’ve been taking a lot of valium. i wonder who is next.

this is my third funeral for a friend in 5-ish years. i feel like the grim reaper a little bit. i am so obsessed with death and the dying and since i was 12 i’ve wanted to be the one to remove their organs and pump them full of fluid and sew them up and keep them safe. i’ve watched a million autopsies online. i imagine myself stroking their foreheads and gingerly transferring guts into jars as if somehow their spirits will know i was sweet to them all the way through. i was looking on indeed for mortuary jobs for the hundredth time a week before i got the call. now, i’m not so sure. how much control do i want? i feel no god. i can’t relinquish power and fate to a thing i don’t trust or know. but i trust and know myself. can’t i be enough to handle it? i have no fucking idea anymore. maybe with some distance i’ll want to get up close again. but right now i never want another person to go in a box.

we live forever in love and laughter. once that energy is created it can never die. people laughed at my speech. i wanted to provide some levity. our friends and i made jokes in the back of the church all afternoon. i hope you wouldn’t want us to be totally serious. when we were constant fixtures in each other’s lives we went far and wide to say the most offensive shit we could possibly think of. i’ll always remember you that way.

an older woman called me baby in the line to get food at the repass. the venue was decorated like a bar mitzvah. it felt like a birthday party where the person being celebrated didn’t show up. but love was all around. i hear donny hathaway’s voice in my ear….

i love you in a place where there’s no space or time

i have a lot more i want to say. i wanted to call you the other night when i was with the girls but remembered the whole reason i was at natalie’s in venice was because we were carpooling to your funeral. someone showed up that you would’ve fucking died laughing to see. i hope you had a good trip with your family before the car veered off the road. i hope things were nice at the end. hundreds of people came. everyone knew you. everyone knows you. we will know you forever. i’m sorry more people didn’t get the chance. i’m sorry about everything.