Absent Friends
by James McDonald
Copyright© 2025 by James McDonald
True Story Story: My most and only significant piece of writing.
Tags: True Story
Reflections at the Wall.
If you look real hard, out of the corner of your eye, you can see them.
Standing there, Laughing, loud, argumentative, and profane.
And full of the energy, vigor and virility that we knew them to be,
right up to when they became Names on this Wall.
If you close your eyes, you can hear them.
Kidding one another about the places they’ve been, the women they’ve known,
the friends that they’ve had.
Talking about their cars, their parents and the things that they’re going to do when they got back home.
If you stand real still, you can feel them. Close to you. Reaching out to touch your arm, to grasp your hand, to hug you close and to tell you that they are all right, and that they understand, and that they miss you too.
When you reach out and touch the stone, you feel the warmth of it as it catches the sun’s rays, and holds them to itself, and passes them back to your fingers and hands, almost as a thing alive.
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