Dec 2014
There is no more straddling state lines for you.
You are no longer teetering on the edge of
life and death
because you are now deader than my father’s
dead bell heart. You are laying in a morgue and
I am sitting on a train, miles and miles from you. An
early bloomer, a preemie baby boy, you are
one day too soon.
I am watching the trees of Arkansas of Missouri of Illinois
pass me by, but you are being
whisked
and
twirled
and
whirled
through the stars.
(I am trying to imagine what it must feel like to
explode into a supernova, to
implode into a constellation.
I am trying to contemplate what it means to
reach
i n f i n i t y
and
n i h i l i t y
at the same time.)
Careening headfirst towards the midwest, I
am heading towards a home I no longer wish to go. I have
spent my night in a daze between
asleep and awake,
listening to a man snore and a baby cry, and nothing is stopping
me from thinking about the steps in post-mortem care. I have
seen dead bodies before. I have touched dead bodies before.
I do not want to come in contact with yours.
My problem is not that you finally finished your
transition from boy to skeleton,
my problem is that you did so without
asking your mother’s permission. I read the
Book of James the night before your surgery two years ago
and forgot it the very next day. There is nothing I want more
than to swim laps and crochet scarves and write bad poems and
become void of all the information that I currently hold.
I want to forget that I knew you.
I want to forget that I thought I loved you.
I want to forget my attachment to you so it won’t
hurt as bad now that you’re
( d e a d ) .
You are no longer teetering on the edge of
life and death
because you are now deader than my father’s
dead bell heart. You are laying in a morgue and
I am sitting on a train, miles and miles from you. An
early bloomer, a preemie baby boy, you are
one day too soon.
I am watching the trees of Arkansas of Missouri of Illinois
pass me by, but you are being
whisked
and
twirled
and
whirled
through the stars.
(I am trying to imagine what it must feel like to
explode into a supernova, to
implode into a constellation.
I am trying to contemplate what it means to
reach
i n f i n i t y
and
n i h i l i t y
at the same time.)
Careening headfirst towards the midwest, I
am heading towards a home I no longer wish to go. I have
spent my night in a daze between
asleep and awake,
listening to a man snore and a baby cry, and nothing is stopping
me from thinking about the steps in post-mortem care. I have
seen dead bodies before. I have touched dead bodies before.
I do not want to come in contact with yours.
My problem is not that you finally finished your
transition from boy to skeleton,
my problem is that you did so without
asking your mother’s permission. I read the
Book of James the night before your surgery two years ago
and forgot it the very next day. There is nothing I want more
than to swim laps and crochet scarves and write bad poems and
become void of all the information that I currently hold.
I want to forget that I knew you.
I want to forget that I thought I loved you.
I want to forget my attachment to you so it won’t
hurt as bad now that you’re
( d e a d ) .
Written on a train, while I was leaving Little Rock and heading towards Milwaukee, for my friend, James, who lost his life to brain cancer a few hours before on December 18th, 2014.
