For this writing group meeting, my friend John went to Home Depot and gathered up paint chips:  euphoric magenta, misty lavender, planetary star, Renoir bisque, canyon dusk, blueprint, what remains

In my dreams, the dead refuse to talk to me.  They show up often enough, passing me in the hallways of hospitals or on the sidewalk in front of the state capitol.  My mother wears euphoric magenta lipstick.  My father sets grocery bags on the counter and a planetary star pops out.  My friend Craig pulls a blueprint from his pocket. I awake on the cemetery lawn, wondering.  

When they were alive, we communicated often even when they were on the other side of town.  I’d hear my mother telling me about her favorite new TV show.  My father sent investment advice.  Craig sometimes treated me to a view of my kitchen from above.  Once when he wasn’t there, he told me there are no masters, no angels, no guides—even though he’d spent decades telling me just the opposite.  

There is only energy.  Watch it moving, it expands and contracts like lungs and heart, river and wind, flowing together, beating softly like a child in stocking feet, a cat jumping lightly onto a book shelf.  It is easy, 100 percent pure, misty lavender, Renoir bisque, canyon dusk.  

I sought him out the next day.  Did you really tell me this?  Was that you?  

He shrugged.  I thought it was time you knew.

When he died, he sent no word.  A week later, crying so hard in my car I had to pull over and park near the deli, he appeared in the passenger seat beside me, and he said nothing.  Yet I could feel his sadness, not for himself, but for me.  Because it’s gonna be hard, that’s what he was conveying.  Over and over again, that’s the message:  it’s going to be hard.   

But this is why you came here.  To this planet.  At this time.  Take notes.  Write it all down.  It’s what you agreed to do.

Photo by Veit Hammer on Unsplash