I am, really, for everything. I should've listened to 'Ama. Of course it wasn't worth it, and some dark part of me knew it, deep down.

Te extra�o. No mucho, but enough to where it still bothers me. You will always be that haunting prescence in the back of my throat, lingering there, waiting to come up and choke me on insomiac nights. I wonder if I'll ever see you again. But only sometimes do I wonder. Most times I just breathe, and everything blows away. You are special to me, kid, you know that, but you're one wound that has managed to heal. I love your scar on my heart.

I bet if you were still alive, we would have parted ways way back. You wouldn't remember me, nor I you, at all, except maybe on drunken nights, or when we ran into each other at Static-X concerts. If you even liked Static-X. If I even had the money to go. If we ever stayed the same, then maybe we would've seen each other again...

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry we couldn't mean more to each other in life than the casual way we did. I wish we could have been closer friends, if ever I believed in such things, if ever you gave a shit to. If ever we weren't such loners, if we only tried. But no, no it didn't happen that way. You had to die, and I had to weep and make up for all those days we sat still and didn't speak to each other but we connected. For all those mornings I waited for you, because I waited for you, kid, even after you were dead. And if I hadn't ever found out about that accident, I would have waited some more in vain hope... vain, all in vain...

People like Aaron piss me off. Why did I let him remind me of you? He's nothing like you, like you ever were. But maybe by now you'd be in his place, you seemed to be going in the same direction. Things happen for a reason, and I'm glad you died before becoming like that. I'm sorry I'm glad you are dead. But I prefer you this way, actually. Like this you will never grow, never change on me. Like this you will never disappoint me. Because you can't disappoint me, kid, you mean the world to me at times, y'know? I wish you weren't dead so I could hold you, so I could want to hold you and never do so. So we could be complete strangers and friends all at once, so we could sit like stones robed in black and try hard not to look at each other and smile. Try not to connect because we are the same. Because we were the same. Were. But not anymore, because you stay the same, Marco, my friend, but I have to grow. I have to stay here and pray for your rest eternal. You get to stand invisible beside me and shrug all prayers away because to you they mean nothing, coming from me. Because I know I am nothing to you. I must have been the last thing on your mind the night you died. I know you were the furthest idea on mine. But perhaps, when I die, I'll see you then. And then perhaps we can bring ourselves to embrace for old time's sake when we never did. Maybe then I can ask if you liked the poem I wrote for you, and you can shake your head and laugh and ask why it didn't involve any rotting corpses or zombies. And I'll say it's too late to add some, because we'll both be dead then, and there will be no one left to write anymore.

I'm sorry this is the only way I can keep you alive, by writing about you, or talking to you when no one is around to hear me. I'm sorry you're not just a phone call away. Naw, you're just a drive away. A bleak, quiet drive to the cemetary away from me. It's a drive I haven't been able to bring myself to make for a very long time... I'm sorry I never took you flowers. I'm sorry I never brought myself to speak at your funeral, I'm sorry I pulled away, sorry I got depressed for you, sorry I lashed out at the living, sorry you had to become my imaginary friend. I'm sorry I pulled you into my world, I'm sorry I ever met you. I'm sorry I ever met Aaron, sorry he ever decided to be a drunken idiot and get his ass arrested but I didn't know any better and assumed he was with you, dead somewhere. I'm sorry I ever thought he was worthy of making me recall your memory, sorry I made you so important until after you died, sorry I couldn't get to know you better, sorry we were friends, sorry we weren't, sorry all I could think of when you left was a lousy poem, sorry I ever published it when I could've told you all this when you were still breathing...

*sigh*

I'm sorry, Marco. I'm so sorry.