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"What I don't say now will be gone forever. I have one page left, the fire is burning, and I can't let it go to waste."

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  Title: for Brandon
  Author:TheChunk
  More from This Author:The Chunk's Author Page

  ⚠️ Content warning: This article contains themes of grief and personal loss.

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  rating: +64+–x

I skipped work today, Brandon. Can you believe it? You had always said that the day I took off work would be the day the world ends. But today the world wouldn’t even pause. There were a million different people going to work this morning alongside me, drinking their coffee and reading the news as though all was well in the world. Maybe for them it really was, but I couldn't pretend to be one of them. I got as far as the subway, but my legs wouldn't let me make it to the platform. So I came to the only place I can always find on foot. I didn't call out sick. I didn't send an email. Let them look for me all they want: they'll never find me here.

I'm sure you'd laugh if you could see me now. Though it never took much to make you laugh at me, did it? Eight years of poring over city maps and blueprints, and I can't even find my way out of a scrapyard in Queens. But there's no map for this place. I've tried to draw one many times, stumbling over the corridors of rusted iron and thick black dust, but the lines never meet where they should. There's always an exit–sometimes it's close, sometimes it's far, but the only way to find it is to feel your way through. Today I'm just stumbling more than usual.

I've wanted to bring you here since the day I found this place. I know, at a glance it hardly seems remarkable, in the way that nothing in Queens ever seems remarkable. It's just piles of junk metal, right past a gate that's around a corner, behind a bodega, through a parking lot, and under an overpass. As though that doesn't describe all of Queens, from Astoria to South Ozone Park.

But it goes on for miles. It goes on for miles that Queens doesn’t have. Towers of steel, and sheets of rust, and a quiet that I’ve never heard elsewhere. I’ve sketched its corners for years, and I still don't know if it ends.

I would have brought you here when I had the chance, but I couldn't stop myself from waiting. Waiting for the right words, for the right moment, for the right opportunity. But I waited too long, and now there's nothing left to wait for.

Tonight I've gone deeper than I've ever gone before, but I've given up on answers. I've given up on sketches, and notes, and research. I've given up on waiting. It's getting dark, my phone is dead, and all I have now is this letter. So I've burned my notebooks. I’ve thrown them in a trash bin and set them alight. There's only one thing left to write, but I need the light to write it by, and the fire adds such a soft light to such a gray place.

I know I must look foolish, waiting until now. Every day for the last two years I could have written. So why tonight, Brandon? Words are best spent on those who can read them. But what I don't say now will be gone forever. I have one page left, the fire is burning, and I can't let it go to waste.

They say that when you lose someone, you're supposed to talk to people. You're supposed to share memories, and swap stories, and laugh, and cry, and stick together until the world starts to make sense again. But there's no one left in the department who knew you. The Department of Urban Studies is still just a place where people stop on their way to somewhere else. A place where people count the days until they leave.

I used to tell Miriam that once someone leaves the department, I forget them. I've gotten requests for letters of reference from researchers whose names I didn't recognize. They all blend together after a while, like drops of water in a river that have already flowed to the sea. I’ve said this loud, and I’ve said it often. I hope I never said it to you.

I could have built something out of the place, but I've never been much of a builder, have I? Things just tend to crystalize around me. It's as though the entire department has come to take my shape, just because I refuse to move out of the way. At this point, every junior researcher has been trained by me, and they follow my lead, whether I ask them to or not. They print hard copies of all their emails, and they keep the condiments in the break room in alphabetical order. They never ask why. They just accept that that’s the way it is.

But you're still a part of the department too, Brandon. No one on my team has met you, but they’ve all felt your presence. When they read the section in the site dress code prohibiting excessive makeup, they’re reading about you, whether they know it or not. No, you weren’t the first man at the site to wear makeup. But you were the first to do it so badly that they had to take action, weren't you? It’s in the site handbook now. It will be there forever.

I've left all your notes up in the break room. All the haikus scrawled on post-its on the cabinets and refrigerator. The glitter from your pen has faded, but the handwriting could only be yours: the I’s you would dot with hearts. The J's you would dot with hearts. The T’s you would cross with hearts. That's too many hearts, Brandon! No one can read them!

No one can read them, but I won't take them down.

Did you know that everyone on my team knows your name? When I explain to them that staff are no longer allowed to eat cinnamon buns out of the garbage–even if they’re “in a box and mostly whole”–I call it Brandon’s Law. I never tell them more. I’d rather leave them wondering. No one’s ever really known you who hasn't been left wondering.

I’m afraid I've made a habit out of wondering. I’ve been visiting this scrapyard for two years. I'm starting to think that wondering is all it was made for.

Why did I wait, Brandon? Why did I stay silent? This is exactly the kind of anomaly that could get the department up on its feet. We’d get funding. We’d get recognition. We’d get a reason for people to stay. But I never told anyone: Not Miriam. Not Director Davis. Not you.

The sun has already passed behind the skyline, and the tracks around me have started to fade from sight. There are a thousand footprints in the dust, but all of them are mine. Though I could follow them forever, they'll only ever lead me back in circles.

The night you asked me if you should quit was the night I found this place. It's not the reason I was late to see you, though. I was late because I knew you would be late. And what's the point of waiting in one place when there's so much of Queens left to explore?

The entrance was different back then. It's always different. A different shape, in a different place. But always right past a gate that's around a corner, behind a bodega, through a parking lot, and under an overpass. That part never changes. I don't think the junk piles were as high back then. Nor were the paths so narrow, nor the air quite as still. I barely had the time to explore it that night. After all, I might have been late, but I couldn't allow myself to be as late as you. But it was the first thing I would have told you about when I saw you, the first thing I could share: a discovery. A project. Maybe, in the best of all possible worlds, a collaboration that would last for years.

But you weren't late that night. You were already waiting for me, with a serious face, and the blouse you only ever wore when you had bad news. When you told me what you were thinking of doing, I could have taken you straight here. It was just a short walk away, past a gate that's around a corner and…well, you know the rest by now. We could have had a containment proposal drafted by midnight. Discoveries like this don't come often. They’d have paid us to explore this place for a decade just to prove there’s nothing on the other side.

But that wasn't what you wanted, was it, Brandon? This place was never built for you. I could give you every reason to stay and hope you would listen, but I could never make you want it. I could never make you want to be here the way I wanted you to be here.

When you asked me if you should leave, did you expect me to say no? Did you expect me to repeat the same things the rest of them said: that there’s no money in academia? That there’s nowhere to go from the Foundation but down? I could have done it, and you would have believed me. It might have even been true.

If you'd asked me what I’d wanted, I’d have told you to stay forever. I’d have told you that there's more to uncover in this city than can ever be found, and you could have a job here for life if you'd only ask. I’d have told you that this department needs to run on something other than quotas, and deadlines, and regret, and that no man can hold on to regret for long when you’re around.

But that's not what you asked me.

You asked me something else that night: you asked if I thought you were childish. When I said no, it wasn't to reassure you. I said no because I meant it. You’ve never been childish, but you've always been sweet. Sweet, and kind, and brave in all the little ways that men are never brave.

I'm the one who's childish, Brandon. I'm the one who never learned to use his words, the one who sulks and pouts when he has to be a grown-up about these things.

For all of my waiting, and all of my wondering, I still knew. I knew on your last day that I may never see you again. I knew when I saw you off at the front gate, with a handshake instead of a hug, that I was getting it wrong, and I may never have another chance to get it right. But never doesn't feel like never until it comes. There’s a part of my childish brain that still believes, however many times I tell it otherwise, that if I send you an email, you might still reply. That if I call you on the phone right now, you may answer. That if I send you this letter, I may get one back from you, written in smudged ink on rosy stationary, creased because you sat on it before you sent it, just like you would always do with the budgetary reports.

But you were gone for a reason. You were building your own world, far away from here, in places I would never visit, with friends I would never meet. You were finally free. So who was I to try to claw you back?

You had moved on. I was sure of it. Your silence told me that you had a thousand more concerns, and that to reach out now would just be an intrusion.

Did my silence make you think the same of me?

I told Miriam that of all the employees who ever left the department, you were the only one I’d miss. I told her because I hoped that she would tell you. I hoped that she would tell you, but I don't think she did.

So now my letter is almost done, and there’s no one left to read it. By now it's too dark to read anyway. The fire is almost out, and my hand is finding the lines in this notebook from muscle memory alone. My handwriting has always been straight, but I don't know if that will be enough this time.

Everyone still compliments me on my handwriting. For being straight. For being even. For being regular. You were the only one who teased me for it. Two more years of practice, you said, and I could get a job as a desktop printer. Well, it's been more than two years, Brandon. Seems I'm overdue for that promotion.

Maybe that’s why I never posted my haikus next to yours. Taped to the cabinet beside your sticky notes, they looked too official, too imposing, more like an order than a feeling. But thank you for reading them anyway. Did you find them in the garbage while you were looking for cinnamon buns? Or did you find cinnamon buns in the garbage while you were looking for haikus?

You know, there's a second half to Brandon’s Law. I never tell the staff this part, but I know it for myself. No, you're not allowed to eat cinnamon buns out of the garbage. But if someone else has already started, you have to help them finish. Because come on! They were in a box. And mostly whole. We couldn't just let a thing like that go to waste.

When you asked me if you should quit, you never asked me what I wanted. Maybe you didn't have to ask what you already knew. Because I might be bad at saying what I mean, but I’m even worse at hiding it.

I would write all night, but the page is done, and nothing more would fit in the margins. The fire is dead, the wind is quiet, and somewhere very far away from here is the hum of the streets, and the trains, and the buses that keep the world moving.

I may have said goodbye already, years ago at the front gate, but I didn't know how to mean it then. I wish I didn't know how to mean it now. So thank you, Brandon. For being a colleague. For being a friend. For being a bigger part of my life than you could know, and for allowing me the chance to be a tiny part of yours.