It occurred to me today
that I like the way you died.

You died gently, the way I hoped you would,
as if the fall itself was enough.
And then I remembered that the fall itself was.

I let it draw me away
the way I knew it would,
to naked skies hollowed out,
nests for the cool indifferent air
that creeps in after dusk

And then fall crept in on you
as the violent heat we knew dissolved,
and the profuse life turned into something less alive
like the permanent muted color
of the world I now belong to.

Any kind of you and me
that ever would have been
fell,
like the leaves are doing now, I'm told.

They said they changed colors first,
like bruises blooming against the sharp, liquid sky.

And then
they  fell.

By the time they sank to the ground,
they were all dead.

The bodies will be piled
and celebrated by some before burning.

And though they won't know why,
the smell will remind them of something good.

Only those of us
who have already gone might know
that the smell carries every good day these bodies have seen

a whole season of good days,
an age,
brief as it may have been,
worth flames.