I can feel you laughing down my neck just like it was yesterday
I can feel those beige walls pressing in
Slow dancing on an open grave
Twisting the knife into my skin
           This isn't self harm this is processing
           This isn't nostalgia this is letting go.
Winter air wrapped in red so many layers I almost couldn't hear what you said
All draped in ice and grace  
The world isn't as small and snug as it used to be
The world is too near and is not gentle with me
I remember
The way it felt when you crossed the room
And I remember
How it felt to leave too soon
I am not my brothers keeper
And you are not the boy I thought I knew
But winter rises ominous and waking before me
and my hands are already turning blue
I'll hold you if I want to.

Let me know the sweetness of the canopy. The gentle cygnet garden you express in rows. I drift upon the aching embers of the bark of midnight's supper, its kingdom of darkness that I lay upon. Suspended in the air, rocking steadily on a distant plateau, tilling the granules of the earth in my map-lined hands; I pinch the rocks and sand kernels naming places as I snap my fingers. I go to the top of the city I know, a small yellow house in a crowd of tall aspens- and the Catholic church sends me soda and small biscuits, and the Hebrews help me be a better man.

I go to a place which has very small rooms. My legs are like a giant world-sized forklifts that carry the heirlooms of my parents in and out of this universe into another. I make a stride to catch a glimpse of you in passing. I tilt my eyes. I hope that I can see how beautiful you are, once more, if only I lift my head  towards the way in which I know you, or the way in which I once had.