i want to write of you
but i cannot bring myself to finish anything i say
writing about grief through grief
is hard

and you would think that it would be easy
since i've been writing for years
i hate leaving things unfinished

i try not to think of it often
maybe that's the problem

i freeze when i do

i think we were destined from the first time i heard you speak
a rough but gentle voice you carry
and i hope you know it carries me

i feel i've known you for ages
even though it's only been a short while
sometimes i wish i could meet you all over again

you're a rush of air
something i've needed for so long
sometimes it's so hard to breathe around here

in such a way that seems elementary
i want to write the loveliest things about you
i want to put them in the sky

but in the same way
i want nobody to know
i want to go with you wherever you slip away to

and i want you to slip away to me
i want to be that embrace that let's you know you're home
because you let me know the same

the longest road is the one you keep looking back on
the longer you stare
the more it stretches

it seems that the roads i walk have the most rigid bones
the ones that can't quite stretch to that spot
such an ache that i feel it in my own bones

the fact that you're no longer alive
grasps me in the strangest moments
and those bones come through the dirt to hold onto me

they remind me that i too
am in constant ache

i.
i've met god
he's lying six feet deep
in the rare greens of chicago
where the trees make up for the emptiness
the loss
the silence

the grass seems so frightening for its purpose
but yet so full and comforting
i don't blame the slumber

i blame the normality of it all

there is this soft innocence when the sun rises
when your mind is at its weakest
eyelids heavy
bearing the burden of the past
and its memories

the most pure is the softest light
that the sun can bestow onto you

a gentle reminder that the day is new
even when all the days seem stagnant
and sleep is but a distant task

i miss your tires fighting the pavement under our legs
i miss the wind slipping into the cracked windows
i miss how everything turned into slosh as highways stretched

it always seemed as if they only elongated for us
all packed into one car
sharing slushies and eye-roll worthy jokes

nothing else mattered in those hours where we shared space
nothing else seemed more important than each other's company
nothing else sounds better

i wish i felt as cool as i did in the summer of 2016
and i wish i could feel the slow fade into the fall all over again

screaming our favorite songs out the car windows
while the neighbors hastily shut their curtains

in those moments i was free
more free than i ever felt over the weekends home from school

more free than i feel now
more in control than i am now