(First posted here.)

On the matter of {ria}. It’s the name she responds to, the name Nirvana calls her. But I’m pretty sure I never really heard the girl’s name or never really understood the sounds and letters Nirvana uses when actually speaking it.

{ria}

The sound, either an exaggerated sigh or a full-bodied incantation, rolls off Nirvana’s tongue like a tiny hurricane, first that pull of air and then the glorious release: {ria}. Spoken like a lullaby and sung like a poem, the sound of her name floats in mid-air, demanding, magical.

You could almost hear her name say, “I am moon-child, bringer of tides, I am centuries of time spent experiencing things. I am the glittering, impenetrable present, the wondrous here, the golden now. I am the echo of instinct, the dopamine rush of novelty, the sacred—yet ultimately fluffy—onslaught of life.” Life itself.

{ria}

That wasn’t even me waxing poetic, it was her freaking bloody name. You better believe it.

Let me not even get to the kid herself.

No, seriously, don’t let me. I wouldn’t even know how to describe her—if she was even a her. This assumption is purely aural, in the fact that her name ended in a gentle vowel, in a sound commonly tied to female handles.

As far as my eyes tell me, {ria} would be about eleven or twelve. She was shaped like a pre-pubescent child, and by child I mean you couldn’t really tell if she (or he) were a girl (or a boy). What I know for sure, is she spends days and nights talking with Nirvana for a span of several months after the time I found Nirvana wanting to kill herself.

And while that fact made me increasingly jealous, it did actually bring me a semblance of peace. Like someone else was watching over my girl. Now, and only now, am I beginning to doubt the simplicity of their friendship, because all things considered, none of the crazy-ass things that have happened would have happened if {ria} did not jump in the river that night.