you are sitting in the passenger seat
trees are whispers, street signs are ghosts
dark houses sleep outside the windows
there are so many people you don’t know
but there is one, comfortable as home
who still makes you split yourself open;
willing to offer all your internal organs
not just the ones your chest hosts
and it is the first time in so long
that the world stands still

It is a nearly Wednesday morning and
I am so ******.

They told me you were there in the room;
I could hold you if I wanted —
but you were no longer you. Not in any context I knew you as.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, I guess. Is my mourning selfish?
I said: rest easy, you deserve peace but I just kept thinking:
How could a whole person be condensed into a box?
Purple, marbled, cold; one I held as an excuse not to let go.
See, I had seen you yesterday but our farewells were not final at the time;
how could a chance to say goodbye make up for all the love lost —
when lost really means somehow ripped away entirely
and still left inside of me anyway?
What am I supposed to do with it now?
This will happen to all of us.
There’s a ghost in the living room —
but the ghost isn’t you, either.

I watched the moon kiss a sunrise —
through the fingers of skeletons coming back to life.
I saw it all through closed eyes open wide,
I wept dirt and flew down concrete lines;
I felt the embers in my lungs turn to ash outside.

I am nothing, darling, but insignificant —
I may not make history in my short time;
I may not remember when the fire completely dies;
I may never be extraordinary —
but for a moment —
for a glorious, aching moment
I was magnificently alive.
I was alive.