People say the dead are with you all the time. I don't believe them at all. When you are gone, you become the trees and the sky and the cicada song. You are the feathers flapping in black cockatoos in the stunted banksia. You are the space above a black house of Nordic design on a hillside and you are the sun glinting on its mirrored glass. You are cedar wood shavings and stolen oranges. But you are not really here. I don't let myself think otherwise. There's nought to be gained from thinking too hard.

Yet the other night you found a way. I was incredulous, awestruck, joyful. I reminded you you were dead, but you said don't worry about that. You were waxing lyrical about some drawers you wanted to have built. It'll be bloody fantastic , you said, and proceeded to draw me a diagram. Had they kicked you out from wherever you went, I wondered, because you were too alive? I begun to smile. I reached for your shoulder. I could see your small gold tooth. Your hair was grey but your body was still strong. I listened for a long time to you talking about bloody drawers. God, you were magnificently animated. I had forgotten how all those pieces of you assembled into the whole of you.

There was another time too. You were tugging on your wetsuit, easily. Your movements were full of grace, and none of the painful efforts of your last years. Your hair was black as was your beard. Perhaps you even had sideburns. You turned around and I zipped up your wetsuit in the way I had done for since childhood. I don't have to worry about sharks anymore, you said, and you kind of dived down into the deep blue. Bubbles flew upward toward the light.

No, the dead aren't with us at all. They have become rivers and oceans and the golden seaweed on the shore as the sun hangs heavy in the sky.

The dead don't come back.

But sometimes they do.