It's been a year since
the water took you
or the sky took you
or you just went away.
I don't know which
but I know that you're gone.
I remember the first time we met.
I told you that your name sounded like it should be a character in
Harry Potter.
You knew just what I meant.
Little did I know in that moment
that you'd become
one of the greatest characters
I'd meet in my life.
See here's the thing:
I've always been scared of death.
Of how it takes
and never gives a single ****
for what it leaves behind,
for who it leaves behind.
And now after another winter's passed
I sometimes think of how
I never got to thank you,
Of how she never got to love you,
Not fully
and of how I can't seem
to look at a river the same
or how I don't think I ever will.
I don't know how to write
a eulogy, nor am I trying to
But I also don't know how to
say goodbye to that
laugh of laughs or a soul
that shone so bright.
So here's a poem, Rup-
A year late and a goodbye short.

You use your commas
The way a Southern woman
Puts sugar in tea.

How awful it is to lay numb on your bed late at night & think about someone who isn't thinking about you.
How awful it is to dream about someone but wake up alone.
How awful it is to remember everything about someone who doesn't even remember your name.
How awful it is to write about someone who never wrote about you.
Awful, that's how it feels.
Wasted time, wasted years.
How awful it is to sit here and type your name but hitting the backspace button because typing your name gets me nowhere.
This poem is getting me nowhere, and that's an awful feeling.
But it is not as awful as thinking about you.

I wrote

'the waves adorned your feet
in silent hushes'.

I wrote and I never
said. When you needed it,
when you cried for it,
I never said. I wrote.

In your loft,
our joint belongings
swelled my throat
and I didn't say.

But I saw you looking.

Your feet descended first -
from the attic, from the attic,
your feet looked the same.

I couldn't say,
So I wrote this.

As water is to cleansing rain
and heat as to burning flame,
so are you to me; the same.
My fiery rain.

Fill the gutter of my mind.
Fire the coal your heart has mined.
Burn me to the end of time.
Your fire does reign.

r ~ 4/1/14