Friction

You know that voice inside, whispering to free yourself from pointless norms? For Greta, that voice was her sister, the rock star of disbanding.

Her sister was dead. Greta lived on the other side of the Pacific and despite taking the earliest possible flight, she had arrived too late to say goodbye.

The guests slowly trickled out and she settled into the night, gathering memorabilia from the attic. There was a pile of doll clothes, Alfred Hitchcock cassettes and a Howdy Doody’s board game.

Greta never quite acquired a taste for tea, but she brewed a pot of her sister’s Oolong, which she slurped against the windowsill, streams of recollections escaping her eyes.The stairs creaked, full of night.

In the morning, she dipped her feet in the bitter cold sea. The stillness ached. Life had a habit of poking holes into her world, she thought. Greta spread herself thin on the sand, mesmerized by the clouds straying in front of her. There was no voice inside of her anymore. No guiding force to support navigating life. For a fleeting moment though, as she observed dark waters whipping the familiar shore, Greta was sure of two things: she would eventually learn to draft the next chapters of her life despite the void and her sister had been right: one or no goodbye was as good as any, in the end.