It was how still it was.
Like a photograph, a memory.
The dim light in the bedroom
Lighting the hair on your upper lip,
I don't know why I had never noticed it before.
You seemed so peaceful,
as though I could hold your hand
and feel the warmth. As though you had
never stolen fire from the world.
(There were moments, when I look back
where it all seemed so obvious.)
The hair didn't move.
I was sure it should sway,
moving with the gentle rhythm of
your living breath.
(Move ******* you!
Get up and move, you miserable ****
You once stole the sun from the sky.
You placed it in that little blue tumbler,
the one we found in the woods behind
the baseball diamond.
You trapped the sun there and told
us that it would be ours for
as long as we held our hand over the brim.
It was so still, so quiet.
The world had
stopped.
I tried so hard, like you said
but my hand grew tired.
I wavered and the sun escaped back into
the sky.
In my panic I didn't notice how you had
stopped.
(I never noticed the hair on your upper lip.
I wish you could tell me what that meant.)