Last seen basking in the warmth of a moment that felt like forever, though forever turned out to be much shorter than expected.
Last seen with music thrumming through his bones, bass vibrating in his chest like a second heartbeat. A song he couldn’t name now, not because he forgot, but because songs like that only exist in the moment they belong to. Outside of it, they are just noise. Just notes devoid of meaning.
Last seen with a new friend, their elbow propped lazily on the center console, fingers interlaced with his, not holding hands, not exactly. Just touching, just existing, just folded into each other’s presence in a way that felt inextricable. That kind of closeness that is effortless, instinctive. The kind that makes you forget there could ever be a world where it didn’t exist.
Last seen grinning until his cheeks ached, until he was dizzy with joy, with the sheer rightness of it all. How rare it is to recognize a perfect moment while you’re still inside of it.
Clay was last seen here, but now he is gone.
He did not leave all at once. That would have been easier—easier to see, easier to hold, easier to grieve. No, he faded.
At first, it was small things. A missed night, easily rescheduled. A day apart, no big deal. A few more days, what is a week in the grand stretch of a lifetime?
Suddenly, the life that felt so inextricable came untangled with alarming ease. Like it had never been woven together at all. And in its place: silence.
And in the silence, a different Clay.
Still Clay, but someone else, too. Someone shaped by absence instead of presence. A self that is real, but slippery, and unstable, a shadow cast in a different direction. A version that is missing something, missing someone, missing a moment he swore he would hold onto forever.
So I am looking for Clay.
Not the Clay that exists now, the one who stares into the mirror and wonders when he became this version of himself.
No, I am looking for the Clay in the car. The one with music and laughter and smoke swirling around him. The one who thought life would always feel this full, this bright. The one who, just for a while, was not lonely at all.
If you find that Clay, please bring him back to me.
I’d like to be him again.
Even just for a little while.