seeing your phone number feels like
waves of counting days
that were numbered & outstretched before all of us
the most important part of your story
will never reach me
because you kept them away and boxed
with toothpaste and fruit snacks
and knick nacks and heart attacks

but i cant help wondering if you knew
that your days were few
or if you woke knowing
this is it, this is it

if you can see her now
lying on that couch
everything inside her coming unfastened
the door to her private memories
unhinged & hanging in its tilted doorframe
missing you

grandma told me that they found your glasses
old and taped—shirts and shorts
threadbare and discolored
thats who i knew you as, my grandpa
the first to give and store away the better things

the closing of doors and of people is something
i have become used to
but rarely has anyone with such few words
been able to make my tears run with endless sincerity
and thats what i will remember you for
that dry humor that watered life into me
on days where i felt desiccated and barren

i cant taste the disappointment of packing away
a life you built from nothing
i didn’t see the shame of losing it all
but i saw someone who was defeated my whole life
whose eyes traced the floor at family functions
who no one would speak to because of the damage
so id try and crack jokes or talk about smaller things
to take the weight off

you taught me everything i knew about
filing my taxes
the important things, the ones you need forever
to sort my life into compartments, to make it easier

you taught me how to stop speaking in expletives
because I’m a smart girl, people will take me more
seriously this way
so when i get nervous or tongue tied
and don’t know what to say, just like now
i think of you and i find my words
to keep me from saying
i am, like, so sad and unsure of
how to deal with this
and to just say
i miss you and i am sorry
that you were battling all those wars
on your own

there are few people who love you at every angle
of who you are
and when those people are no longer
the air goes cold on the warmest day
and every evening feels like a time without end

i think i would rather be invisible while i search
through old letters and birthday cards
searching through old scars
trying to remember the last feeling like this one
anchored in the harbor of my ribcage
and if i told you what this feels like
i know you’d come back within hours if you could
with some remedy you read about
or some package of medicine
telling me to be well,
be well my dear.