I attended my first calling hours when I was in elementary school. I can’t remember if it was for a family member, my third grade teacher’s husband, or someone my parents knew. But I do remember the line of grieving faces, the satin-lined box, and the sharp pull of tears behind my eyelids.

Usually, when you’re thinking about sending a postcard and writing “Wish you were here,” it’s a note full of life to someone else living too. Usually, you want to try and capture everything you’ve been seeing, doing, feeling in a message to fit on one half of a tiny 4 x 6 rectangle. Usually, you know exactly who wish was with you.

But today, when I saw the prompt was to write a short poem inspired by a postcard and “consistent with the abbreviated format…and should play with the idea of travel, distance, or sightseeing,” my mind went somewhere else entirely.

It went to the dead.

And then to the far away.

Finally, to the soul.

There’s a lot of people I’ve lost that I wish were here, though I’m low-key glad they’ve missed out on some of the chaos and heartbreak of the world. There’s a lot of people I love who I see only through a screen and very rarely in the flesh. There’s a lot of souls that speak to me from the ether, the guides and angels and ancestors.

And on sunny, slow Sundays I wish they were all here to spend the day with me.

xo, adrienne