I’ve filled the emptiest spaces of myself with


                          the best parts of you

not breathing, warm like an homage
but sterile
    
                                                                          remote

a gallery of looped memories
beautiful and untouchable
and convincingly bright
so that no matter where I am
my retinas are tattooed with the space you took in the world
cooking in a scratchy sweater- your electric rants about Jung  
drumming jazz on the street corner for the pay of odd conversation
planting kisses in my hands because you hoped they would grow a wife
endlessly reminding me

                                              (from wherever you are now)

that the best things in life weren’t free
and though expensive beyond measure
how graceful- I hardly noticed how much
I was willing to give
just to keep at a quiet distance

                           this neuronal gallery