The Things We Bury in the Wind

I came back because the wind wouldn’t stop whispering his name.

It happens like this sometimes. A certain kind of dusk, the way shadows crawl through wheat fields, or the scent of rust and lilacs in the same breath—and suddenly, it’s all there again.

Noah.

And the things we left unsaid.

The town hasn’t changed much. Same cracked sidewalks, same faded gas station with the busted neon "O" in "OPEN." It still flickers like it’s trying to say something important but can’t quite finish the sentence.

I park two blocks from the cemetery, walk the rest of the way. I don’t tell anyone I’m here. Not my sister. Not my therapist. Not even the girl I’m starting to think might love me if I’d let her.

This visit isn’t for living.

Noah was my best friend.

Not the kind of best friend you outgrow after middle school. No—he was the tether I didn’t know I needed. A storm in sneakers. He could make anything funny. Could read the room like a poem. Could piss off our teachers and win them back with the same crooked smile.

And he was the first boy I ever loved in that way you’re not supposed to talk about when you’re seventeen and terrified.

But I didn’t say it. Not then.

And now, every time the wind kicks up, I remember that silence like a wound I dressed in laughter.

His grave is simple. Just his name. Noah James Monroe. No fancy epigraph. No truth carved into stone.

But the wind knows.

It’s moving hard today—not angry, just impatient. Like it’s trying to push the past through me and out again.

I sat down in the grass, legs crossed like we were still sharing secrets at the edge of the football field, where we used to go to escape everything we didn’t have words for.

I take a deep breath and say the thing I never said when it mattered:

“I loved you. I love you still.”

The wind stills.

They say grief gets lighter with time. I don’t believe that. I think we just get stronger carrying it.

What happens is, you bury pieces of yourself to survive—memories, regrets, parts of your voice—and you hope the wind takes them somewhere safe.

But it doesn’t.

It brings them back.

One at a time.

When you’re driving alone. When someone touches your arm the way he used to. When you're laughing so hard you almost forget—and then it hits you like a sucker punch.

Noah died in a car accident. Rain. The curve is too sharp. A seatbelt unbuckled.

It happened the same week I was going to tell him. I had the words. I even practiced in the mirror. But then the phone rang, and everything I was about to become was buried under the weight of what never happened.

I never got to say goodbye.

But maybe I don’t have to.

Maybe sitting in the wind with the truth finally out of me is enough.

I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the thing I brought.

A folded note. Faded ink. Written on the back of a class worksheet. "Do you ever feel like you’re living someone else’s life?" Noah had scribbled it in history class. Slide it to me under the desk.

I never answered it. I just smirked.

Today, I do.

I unfold the paper and write three words beneath his:

“Only when I forget.”

I place it on the grave and let the wind decide.

It lifts the note gently, like something sacred. It dances in the air—not away, but around me, as if the sky itself is nodding in quiet recognition.

I stay until the sun leans low.

And for the first time in years, I feel a part of me coming back that I didn’t know I’d lost—not just grief or the memory, but the permission to move forward without letting go.

Because the things we bury in the wind don’t disappear.

They just circle us, waiting for the right moment to return.

And when they do, we get to decide what to do with them.

So, I walked back to the car.

The wind at my back.

No longer chasing ghosts—

Just walking beside one.