'What are you afraid of?'

'Heights, bugs, snakes, the dark, and you.'

'That's a big list.'

'It's a big world.'

'What do you mean you're afraid of me?'

'You're so confident, so unashamedly you, so fabulously different.'

'Really? You think that?'

'And not only that, you've got a good reason to be so confident. You're amazing.'

'You're plenty amazing yourself.'

'Am not.'

'So it's not me you're afraid of. It's people like me.'

'No, just you. Because, you see, you're the only one like you.'

'So I'm alone.'

'You've got me. Your trusty sidekick.'

'You're nobody's sidekick. And you - you're different as well. With your head full of space and the galaxies that spill out onto the paper - there's nobody quite like you either.'

'So we're both alone.'

'We've got each other.'

'Two lonely souls, finding comfort in each other's fantasticness.'

'Sounds like a poem.'

'Maybe it is.'

-

I finish, hiding the piece of paper under a rock and placing it on the freshly turned dirt. It never quite become a poem, but why turn your words into a poem when every one of your words I want to keep on repeat inside my brain.

-

'You written that poem yet?'

'Maybe.'

'If you finish it, put on my grave, ok?'

'Ok.'

-

It didn't scare me when you talked about death this way. It was just another aspect of you, another colour in the many-hued jewel that was your soul.

-

'What are you afraid of?

'Spiders, star-nosed moles, clowns, and being alone.'

-

I take the paper again, adding the ending to the work of art that was your life.

'We were lonely souls,

Walking the earth together.

And now, my dear,

I am a lonely soul,

Without your words to keep me company.'