Not So Broken - Eminem [DISCONTINUED]

The Funeral

~1 Month Later~

Matt had an open casket funeral. He had put a bullet in his head and the goddamned funeral directors still gave him an open casket.

Not many people came-Matt was loved by many and hated by few and yet people who were assumed to be his best friends still did not show. People gave short, half-ass speeches about how much they 'knew' my old lover. It almost made me gag.

When it was my turn to speak, I walked shakily up to the stand. A man who I had come to know so well, Matt's father James Royston, looked at me with unreadable eyes. I took the microphone from him and after a moment of shuffling, the crowd was silent and looking at me with expectant faces. I cleared my throat.

"Matt Royston-" my voice sounded like I was about to lose my composure, so I took a deep breath before continuing, "Was the love of my life. I remember one year for our four month anniversary he took me to his car and put a blindfold on me. He then drove us around for twenty minutes, only to reveal that he had been driving in circles and we were to have a picnic in the park. We hadn't even left town."

I pulled a lame excuse for laughing that ended up only being a pained squeak. The crowd looked at me sympathetically, only making my heart feel heavier. There was a melancholy vibe in the air and the thickness of it was almost enough to choke me as I kept talking.

"Another year, for Christmas, Matt got me the best gift I had ever received. A signed Journey album. It was our favorite." I took a shaky breath, on the verge of sobbing. "Matt loved music. You could ask him any song from the eighties and he would sing it, no problem. That's because we would always dance around my house, in just our socks, having the greatest times."

The air was warm and sticky and so I picked up my unread notecards and fanned myself with them.

"Matt also loved movies. One time, he waited with me for two hours in the snow at two in the morning just to see the opening premier of one of his favorites-The Lone Survivor. He always told me how much he wished he had that kind of opportunity-to prove how much I meant to him. He said that it would be worth it if he died-" at this I faltered, "for me, and for his country. I never did tell him that saying I love you was more than enough for me."

I closed my eyes, unable to look at all of the faces of people Matt had once known. After a few shaky breaths, I said my last words.

"Matt Royston was my best friend, my shoulder to cry on, my rock to hold me down, my laughing medicine. Most of all, Matt was the man that will always have a piece of my heart, even in the grave." I licked my dry lips as I stepped off the podium.

A few minutes later, people started filing out one by one. When I was the last person left, I pulled up a chair by his casket.

Stroking his hair, washed clean of the blood with bleach, I talked to him.

As if he was alive. As if I wasn't talking to his corpse. As if things were back to the way they had always been. "But will they ever be?" I whispered. Before I left, I placed a single white rose on his chest. "Goodbye," I whispered tearfully. Then I was gone.