text: She sat there chewing on her eraser. It seemed like a fairly easy question. Should she write the eulogy or the Latino gender politics essay? The anger towards an untimely death seemed juxtaposed with the anger of American treatment on Puerto Rican homosexuals in the late 20th century. Yet, she sat there still. Half her mind in space and half of it very much here on the ground, in this seemingly unrealistic, yet somehow feasible moment. Let’s take a crack at the easy one, she thought -- eulogy it is. Okay, next question -- this one somewhat harder. Where does one go to write someone’s eulogy during finals week? She didn’t think the library was appropriate. But then again, nowhere really sounded appropriate. And who writes the rules, she thought. Plus, even if somewhere is out there writing them, she didn’t really like what they had decided thus far for her week, so why bother abiding. So that’s how she came to find herself on a scuffed bench in the basement of the library, chewed up pencil fidgeting between her crooked teeth, attempting to form a jumbled thought web into words. That messy chaos going on inside her head had to start somewhere; so she took a few leaps back. First things first, she told herself. Write down every memory that flits through your head; whether it be good, bad, scary, sad. 1. the plays in the cabin where the sheet would go up between the bunk beds and they would dress Brian up like a girl 2. when mom would dye their pancakes colors after soccer, blue was the best 3. how every time the girl ate green beans, she would choose one that looked like a snail that *had* to be thrown away 4. that time dad took her door off its hinges 5. when mom poured coffee over all the halloween candy and they snuck back out to see what made it 6. when they made a huge cardboard house out of their dad’s snowblower box 7. that time they drove to Stillwater just because the girl thought they have the best Swedish fish 8. when they were riding horses in Mexico and they were convinced that one cowboy was Joe Jonas 9. when she got her first period and the girl reluctantly showed her how to use a pad 10. the amount of cavities the girl got 11. number 11 12. candy corn 13. the shitty white alero with the basketball case of CD mixtapes That’s it? That’s all she could think of? Twenty-two years and there were 13 things jotted down on her oddly dry paper. 13 random, unimportant, who-cares types of things. Those 13 things didn’t say anything about a person’s life, heck they barely even said anything at all. How was she supposed to take this trash and turn it into some eloquent bullshit about how beautiful a life was, how much this world will miss someone’s light, their laughter, yada-yada. Maybe she should have tackled the Puerto-Rican homosexuality crisis first. More thoughts began infecting her mind. New thoughts. Isn’t it odd that all eulogies tend to be the same? Every person, at every funeral known to man, talks about how ***their*** person had a “smile that could light up a room” and they’re in a ***better*** place now, how only the ***good*** die young. That’s dumb, she thought. Not to mention, she knew a lot of very ***good*** people that were definitely well past young. And, back to eulogies, if these people are already dead -- why not tell the truth? The girl’s life was not perfect, and a lot of the time she did not light up a room. In fact, it felt like a lot of the time she sucked all the light out of the room. And if she was gonna go full-blown lie detector mode on herself, a lot of the memories seemed to be bad. They appeared in a word cloud full of screaming, crying, drinking, hospitals, anxiety, bones, barfing. Those were the words that came to mind when she thought of the girl. Not heart, not laughter, not even smile. She sat there some more. She thought about honesty, and how that would be taken at a funeral. But the more honest she got with herself, the more bare-boned and unfiltered the descriptions in her mind became -- the better the outline of the girl was. Bony, tears, alcohol, Christmas, running water, uncontrollable. These were the first words. But somehow those words were what pushed the onslaught of the next words -- Proud, blue, unwavering, persistent, sparkle?, unabashed. The scary brought forth the good, and with the good came the pleasant authenticity of these new words. She scribbled them down (good and bad).