The whole warm colony has stopped moving at once, all of them turned toward a single still thing at the front of the room, and none of them are wasting the light on hurry.
They are here for one who has finished. I understand finishing; I will finish tonight, when the sky goes purple over the water and the last of my dance is danced. What I do not understand is the wetness on their faces, because a finish is a whole thing, round and complete, and you cannot cry at a circle for closing.
Then a large one stands and says the finished one loved gardens, loved coffee in the mornings, loved a certain song, and I feel the room fill with the word again, again, again, thousands of mornings, thousands of songs, a whole river of days handed to this one creature. And they weep because the river ran out. I nearly laugh with joy for them. What a wealth. To have had morning more than once.
They keep saying we will remember. They say next year. They say every year now, on this day. This stops me cold with wonder: they will hold this stillness open and step back into it, on purpose, over and over, a grief they visit like a room. I get one grief. I get one of everything, and it is enough, it is a feast, it is the entire meal.
So listen, you long-lived, dozing things with your thousands of mornings still in your pockets: the finished one loved coffee. Go. Now, while the light is on you. Drink it hot.
Do not save the song for the drive home.