I am afraid of showing emotion.

Written in the voive of a male. Written after a prompted free-write. Title suggestions?

I am afraid of showing emotion


The church bells ring and I enter with a stench of flowers in my nose. I sit on the wooden pew, with nothing to cushion my warm body from the cold it gives me. I am wearing my “nice clothes” which consist of a suit bought for my sisters wedding that now hits well above the wrists and shoes that were purchased for a minor court appearance a few years earlier. Friends surround me, or familiar faces at the least. I like to believe they are friends, but there really is no debating it. I have no evidence. Friends are people I invite over for drinks, or go out to dinner with on Saturday nights, or play cards with Fridays after work. I don’t know these people outside of everyday.
But I am not an outsider, my true friend is staring at me from the pulpit, her face multiplied and enlarged all over the room through pixels and ink. But today is the day that I need the face to be in flesh and bone, to be warmed with life. I feel cold. I am exhausted from not crying, no letting the tears come out to hydrate the barren land I feel within. It seems as though all my tears are locked in the casket before me, where she now lays along with the happiness and smiles that were once provided by her. I can’t get them out; I can’t get her out. They are banging inside the casket loudly, my love and hate and tears and smiles are trapped in there with her, soon to be buried in the fresh plot that waits at the graveyard. I don’t want to be buried half dead, and I don’t want to keep living half dead. I want to come out of that casket, but I don’t want to leave her.