I can’t feel the concrete through my shoes
As the chain-link cage around the sidewalk loops around me.
I climb steadily up the incline to your bridge.
The cars pass quietly and sparsely, hopping islands
In this suppressed midnight hour, streetlights reflected
Beneath us in the water. I carry you with me, as I do every day.
It’s been three months, nine days.
I think of our days together.
Of our youth, of your lilac perfume and chestnut eyes.
I think of how we never got tired,
Or how you never got old,
And I reach the apex of the bridge with these thoughts swimming about.
I lean and look to the water as the reflections shimmer in a boat’s wake.
And I wonder how it felt when you landed.
I want to ask you, was it instant? Did you feel yourself pass?
And I want to find out, to dive in after you and chase you down.
Did I tell you, I can’t see my therapist anymore?
I can’t afford her.
And as soon as I couldn’t pay, she cared little of my problems.
How ****** is that?
I raise our daughter alone now, but I can’t do her hair how you could.
She’s sixteen months, and four days.
I think often of if she’ll remember you as something more
Than one of her father’s stories
But the other day, she saw your picture on the mantle.
And she called for you, and began to cry as she pointed.
And I followed suit as I struggled with her hair.
I wonder, if you would have let me, could I have helped?
This that I feel now in your wake, shimmering like those lights,
Is this how you felt for those last months?
Could I have done anything to stop this?
And I think of your parents, of mine, of the therapist that I can’t see anymore,
With their piercing, bloodshot eyes.
Their needling questions.
I wonder if that’s how you perceived me, and I realize,
There’s nothing I could’ve done to help either of us.