I just woke from experiencing what it felt to be free
of a doctrine, of this overlying immense pressure to be righteous and respectful,
that which I've inherited from my own expectations and from those of whom I admire.
I had been touched by something even bigger than my own self perseverance-
than my connections between "the wise,"
than my science that I hold so dear.
It's almost indescribable- so bear with me
as I dig through my consciousness for a dream that could just be a great answer to our confusions.
I felt myself sifting through a softened solid
that was smooth and sunset-hued.
It stretched around me but went through me all the same.
It was warm but refreshing.
It cleared away the dichotomies, the questions, the labels into a vast spaciousness that couldn't ever make me feel loneliness because in this clear space,
there was you.
In a raw form- without explanations, without excuses, without fear,
without the taste of another on your lips,
without the pressure to exist.
Just you, and your experience floating around and through you,
in the most beautiful colors I've ever seen you don.
It was just you, and it was just me,
in soft solids of insight.
When I stepped forward, I saw your life around you,
not my interpretation riddled with negative and positive energies,
but the sights and sounds that created an indefinite understanding.
With the sunsets swimming around them.
As I got closer I began to notice my own life,
spirits of the past grazing my skin gently
and gingerly.
And when we finally were face to face,
in what might be nano-seconds
our eyes were not expectations but one,
our lips were not provocations but one,
our bodies were not vehicles but one.
And it felt comfortably fluid as we walked together in something I can only liken to acceptance.
It was fleeting, however.
I was pulled out of this by the hands of 3 AM on a Tuesday, my disappearing fever,
and desire to relieve myself from all of the water I consumed before bedtime.
The lingering feeling of insight and acceptance urged me to write,
and expel the overwhelming emotion of wishing I never woke up.
I couldn't stop sobbing
and I hadn't a clue why.
I guess it was because in this dream
I came to know
the world is crumbling around us
and all we can see are the demands and the means to be something other than oneness.
We choose be chained by these requirements,
because living in this world is not the safety of the amniotic sac that we leave behind in the past.
We should know that we could relive that every time we create something we strongly believe doesn't have to last.
I'm not sure who I've lost,
or what I've found-
but I can hope
it's knowing that we may not ever precisely touch what love is despite how much we try to render it through words
and actions,
a definitive language that gives us its tangibility.
But it can touch us.
It can touch us into being one again,
if we put our lives on pause,
It can touch us if we let it.

I hope the multiverse theory is true
and there’s infinite me and infinite you.
And due to the nature of infinite chance,
there’s a world where we have had time to dance,
there’s a world where we’re happy,
a world where we’re sad,
a world where I’m playing mom and you’re playing dad.
In one universe I was never born.
In one universe your ACL’s torn.
I’ll cry for the worlds where we’ve never met,
but in one world you’re Romeo and I’m Juliet.

there's this theory, my mom once told me,
that liars are always reincarnated as dogs
i've been thinking a lot about people dying lately
and i've also started counting time in dog years
according to such, it's been about two long dog decades
i don't miss you anymore, and i'm about done grieving you
(you would've just called me out- i'm a liar through and through)
and i found that if i drink enough, you're still here, well and alive
your mom never cries or loops your old playlists when she drives
your dad never comes over to gift me souvenirs from your life
your sister never learns to shape grief into an essay in one night
no, you're still helping her brainstorm what exactly to write
we stay up together, on facetime, stressing the the entire night
and she chooses premed because of a torn ACL, not a torn family
and we spend hours debating if she should submit her SATs
and grief is only ever-so-distant, yet only oh-so-familiar
we have it our way: it is never more than a recognizable stranger
i write you in present tense, you agree: dogs in our next life
i gaslight, i lose my mind, i'm convinced anything's worth a try-
so, how many poems do you think i have to write
for it to be enough to bring a friend back to life?

o, you great young idiot!
you left blisters on my fingers from
lifting up all of your tiredness
trying to exalt it to heaven with human weight
i have broken exactly sixteen bones trying to
maintain the weight. lifting up your body
your suicide. your death. you made me
atlas and ******* my acl is torn and i have
arthritis.

o, you great young idiot!
you kissed a girl for the first time and didn't think
you'd ever be allowed to do it again. you thought
you'd be dead by next week but alas, you were
not and the reaper didn't take you in the night.
you kissed a boy for the first time and hated it.

o, you great young idiot!
you are sleeping in church and being forced to
realize god is over hyped. you think
maybe I'm wrong
but they always prove you right.

great young idiot!
don't **** yourself before the rains come.

i didn't know how angry
a scar could be until i saw
one on myself it was something
like a pocket-sized chilean coast
dragged across my knee disrupting  
and hills still dispersing as an acl
torn but unseen like how the many
excerpts of dreams were wiped clean
the anger is always ephemeral but
it always comes back whenever
i want to feel breeze in hair perhaps
i just miss the delaware river scene
and a long ago when my pencils
moved too quickly for my thoughts
yes indeed maybe i just miss loving
the journey not for the end like the
part where i did not know anything yet
still believed that it was all for the better

We lost you 10 days ago.

On the first day
I had just gotten my old job back
I walked into the main office
And told everyone how nice it was to see them again
Then I went back into my office
And heard you had passed
I flew home that night

On the second day
I tried to rest, recover the sleep I had missed  on the first
I couldn’t
My family wanted to go out to eat
I told them I couldn’t leave my room

On the third day
I got to see the friends we grew up with
Some I hadn’t seen in five years
We sat at a table for four
I kept looking to the open space to my right expecting to see you in a chair

On the fourth day
I bought a suit for your funeral
It had been so long that none i owned fit me
You would’ve thought I looked nice
You would have told me that

On the fifth day
I spent a night in your apartment
Surrounded by people that loved you
Some that loved me
I stood in your room and lingered
Our close friend saw me
We held each other and he showed me all the things in your room you had taken from him
I told him about an orange shirt you had taken from me because it was too large
We pulled out an orange shirt from a pile, thinking we had found it
It was a different shirt

On the sixth day
I got to see your face for the last time
I focused on your hands
because they looked how I remembered
I got to see you be put in the ground
I got to see my first love there
We hadn’t spoken in years
She told me she was married
I told her that was nice to hear
I spoke to your father, he had to be reminded of who I was
He hadn’t seen me since I was 8
But once he remembered
We spoke and we laughed
I spoke to your mother
I thanked her for moving to our town, I thanked her for you
I told her about all the good you brought to my life
She said I did the same for you

I cried that day and every day prior

On the seventh day I bought a flight back to Los Angeles for that night
I spent Mother’s Day with my family
I ate bad Greek food
We had to pull over next to a Wawa for me to use the restroom
I took the flight home
Normally I would have called a taxi but I asked my roommate to pick me up
You had introduced me to him
He used to sublet your room in our old apartment
I told him about the last seven days
I didn’t cry once

On the eighth day
I returned to work
Back for good I told them
I told my boss I ordered shakshuka for lunch because it was the last thing I ate with you
She said  she was considering the chopped salad

On the ninth day
Most of the same things happened
I spoke to the close friend who was still grieving in New York
I told him things would improve once he left the city
I saw my girlfriend who is recovering from a torn acl
She’s prescribed medication to help with her pain
I couldn’t stop asking her why I didn’t feel worse

On the Tenth day
I made a mistake at work
One that will likely never rear its ugly head
It’s the worse i’ve felt in 4 days
Sometimes I wish I could live in the pain I felt when I lost you
There nothing could hurt me
There nothing could be worse
You are gone and each day that passes you will be gone a little longer
And each day I will feel a little better
And I worry I may hate myself for that