In Defiance of
Posthumous Courage

Read me now, while it matters to me and can still change me, while the lungs in me answer and the voice in you is close enough to be heard, and let whatever survives on the page later belong to some archive, not to us. Read me aloud so the words leave your mouth and travel back into mine and we recognize each other in that. Not as ceremony but as contact, as proof. Here at the edge of morning, no props, only light and breath and the sentence testing its strength, and feel it tremble the way a horse does before the run, alive and impatient and certain of its course only once it moves, and let me answer, and interrupt, and ask you to go on, and ask you to stop, and tell you where it hits and where it misses, because I am here, and you are here, and this is the living hour when language can still do work between people instead of drifting into tribute.

And tell me a story that matters to you now, before revision edits out the wild parts. Tell me why the tune your grandmother sung survives in your throat, or how you learned to outswim doubt in the deep end of a public pool. Tell me how you earned every scar you are willing to show, then invite me to laugh at the ones we keep hidden behind cotton and bravado. Do it today, while there is time to interrupt, to ask questions that wander, to push back when the memory slips, to press for the messy chapters the family prefers to skip. A memoir delivered to silence is a confession without an ear. I want the argument, the digression, the sudden detour that proves the narrator is fallible and, therefore, worth following.

If you love me, say it while breath still moves through me. Place the words in my hands like something warm you’ve been keeping, simple and shining because it is yours. I will hold them through every season, reach for them on cold mornings, let them remind me I am seen. And if you hate me, tell me that too, in clear daylight, while I can answer, make amends, or at least understand where the road split. Better the burn of truth now than a grievance hidden away until it curdles and stains everything it touches.

Argue with me while the afternoon sweats. We will trade evidence and insults until the room smells like iron and anger. Raise your voice, and I will raise mine, and somewhere between the blows we will learn which convictions bleed and which heal. Do not wait for funeral to explain where I was wrong. A eulogy is a one-way door. Kick at it now, while hinges still groan, and we might yet rebuild together. Disagreement faced in real time is a forge, postponed is rust.

Bring me your music before the final encore fades. I want to hear your off-key devotion, your imperfect pitch, the lyric you misremember but sing anyway because it belonged to your first kiss or your last heartbreak. Let us trade verses until dusk wipes the sun from the sky. I will clap on the wrong beat, you will forget a line, and somewhere in the laughter we will prove that perfection is a rumor started by those who never danced. When the melody stalls, we will whistle it back into motion. A song saved for later is a banquet left untouched, it may still look lovely, but the warmth has escaped.

Forgive me now, if you can. Ask for my apology while I can still walk to your door and meet your eyes. Wait, and the apology turns brittle and rehearsed, a script spoken to an empty room. Forgiveness unreceived is a terrible thing. It lingers, it sours, it teaches nothing, it twists hurt into habit. Take my thanks today as well, before memory edits the scene and we both forget what was given. Let me say it here, where you can interrupt, refuse, or accept, and we can leave this hour lighter.

Make plans with me while the soil of intention is soft. Tell me the city you dream of visiting, the recipe you want to perfect, the marathon you threaten to run though your knees protest. We will draw a crude map on a napkin and laugh at it, but the compass of will prefers reckless lines. Promise me nothing beyond our agreement to try, and we will still have promised enough.

Cry with me before the tears harden. People say grief bends time, yet it also freezes it. The person who postpones mourning ends up alone in a place no one else inhabits. Let your sorrow soak my sleeve now, so that later, when smiles return, they hold both salt and sunlight. Let our quietest moments be genuine.

Drink with me while the bottle still holds whiskey and stories alike. A toast given to an empty chair rattles in the throat. Pour two glasses, even if one of us will nurse it longer. The point is the clink, the affirmation that distance has not yet stolen the closeness.

Walk with me this evening down any street. Let us nod at neighbors we never bothered to learn, admire porch lights buzzing with moths, and practice mercy toward the world exactly as it is, unfinished, ungainly, wonderful in the way a dog chasing its tail refuses to surrender the pleasure of the spin. Tomorrow, the same street may exist, but our stride will be different, our thoughts elsewhere. Catch this version while we can.

And when the night thins, speak my flaws beside the fire. Do it plainly. I will answer, or I will take the correction like medicine, bitter and necessary. Truth traded late is gossip. Truth traded now is salvage, a chance to mend a beam before the roof caves. We owe each other the effort.

Here, at last, is the only thing I ask.

Do the living while we live. Wave across the room instead of drafting a message you never send. Mail the gift you have been meaning to share. Apologize in person, kiss without contemplation, argue without malice, forgive without ceremony, sing without accompaniment, love without delay.

There will be a day when my telephone rings and no one answers. Let that silence find us empty of unfinished songs, bare of bottled words, light as stripped branches in autumn wind, spent, heard, and unafraid.

Let the silence find no debt between us.