we are sitting on the curb of your driveway.
you are peeling an orange and I am watching your piano fingers
twist the tough skin away in a methodical rhythm that would be
almost comforting,
except I know that this isn’t real and you aren’t here.
the backs of your knuckles
are covered in constellations of scars still.
it surprises me that I thought they wouldn’t be there,
as if somehow your ghost would no longer carry any traces
of the pain I was so oblivious to six years ago.
I can hear your sister fighting with her boyfriend
in the kitchen again.
back then you used to joke that he’d end up in prison one day.
you were right, and I’m sure you’d find it funny if I told you this,
but I say nothing and I am ashamed
that this part of me has remained unchanged.
you pass me an orange slice and
we are probably listening to an Eminem song,
though I can’t be certain which one.
it doesn’t matter,
because after all,
this is a dream.
I will pretend I don’t know the words like always
and make up my own raps,
knowing that you will laugh.
and in this dream, I will laugh with you.
In this dream, I do not hate you for leaving me only
with these perfect memories and hazy recollections
for company.
instead, I will think that perhaps
time has done me a favor by erasing
the parts that would would make me hate myself
more than I hate you.
your face is never the same when I look at it.
mismatched and jagged,
as if Picasso had painted a loose likeness
from the scraps of days like these.
and I know that this is my punishment
for never noticing the important things
while you were alive.
six years, and I am already forgetting you.
I wonder if you would be disappointed or delighted
by the way I recite these seemingly insignificant details
to strangers when they ask
what you were like
not for them, but for me,
because one day I will wake up and no one will remember
that you had a bicycle bell voice,
and that your favorite color was the stinging blue
of candle hearts,
though you could never get your hair to match it quite right.
they will never know what it feels like
to hear your name leave their lips,
always in past tense.
the private agony of
was and must have been and I’m sorry.
they will never know that
I still write you in the present
and that one day
I will leave this poem for you
when I no longer need someone else
to peel my oranges.