I can't wait until I die.

I'm not eager for death.
I've confronted it recently and found myself scared shitless.

My cousin died.
May 15th, 2019.

My Uncle climbed through her car to find her phone.
He waded through puddles of her congealed blood.
She was his daughter.

I can't get the image out of my head recently.
My uncle, sitting in the cab of a destroyed truck,
Searching for an iPhone.

Growing up, my teachers always told me

"Write what you know"

But I don't know much anymore.
I'm pushing twenty-five.

They tell me to write what I know
But most of what I know is heart break and alcoholism
Even that feels fake nowadays.

So what do I know?

Death and depression.
Alcoholism and failing family genetics.
Receding hairlines and divorce proceedings.

Write what I know,

But I don't know ****.

Heaven is a myth
Spread by the rich to convince the poor
To follow their rules

Or maybe it isn’t
I’m just some dumb **** with a pen
Not some cosmic authority

But whether it’s real or not,
I still think of you there,
Cracking jokes to Saints

I’m sorry I didn’t know you better.

I’ll do my best to listen to every story they tell of you now.

But for what it’s worth, I admired you.

I’m sorry I never managed to tell you that.

I’ve been doing better recently.
(I promised you I’d try)
But I have to confess it isn’t all forward progress.

I collapsed in the kitchen again tonight.
Sobbing openly in the silent solitude
On the tiles with my back against the cupboards

It’s only when I see your Christmas card
Magnetized to the fridge
Between unpaid bills and children’s drawings

I'm as drunk as you were
The night you drove your Corolla into that street light
So excuse any spelling errors that might occur.

I should wait until I'm sober
But when I'm sober I won't have the courage to write this anymore.
I can't quite feel my hands across the keyboard.

So maybe this won't end up a poem.
And maybe you won't end up alive at the end.
But I leave azaleas on your grave on Wednesdays.

It's just like back in time, in 2009
Sometime in January, stoking the coals of a fireplace,
Playing Gears of War 2 and exploding a lambent Brumak.

I didn't know you were drunk then.
I had an alcoholic for a brother and didn't know.
And a father, and an uncle, and two grandparents.

It was in my blood
And growing up, I was scared,
Because you were proof of how bad I could've gotten.

You could've called me.

December 19th, 2018, you could've called me.
But you were cut off at one bar and drove to another,
And when they cut you off they drove you home.

I won't have the courage to finish this.

I'll save it when I'm as drunk as you were
When your Corolla took a lightpost out.
Seven thousand in property damage, at least.

I won't have the courage to finish this.

Like you didn't have the courage to finish the night.
Like you didn't have the courage to finish a life.
You couldn't even last a lifetime.

But I'm as drunk as you were.
December 19th, 2018.
Maybe you passed the torch onto me.

I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing anymore
Without you, things seem just a little bit dimmer.
And I pretend things are okay,
And I pretend things are okay.

I can't define pentameter.
You used to know what it meant.
You told me when my poems were ****** up.

I can't define pentameter
Your name was Trevor
I think I might be falling apart.

I wonder what was the last thing that went through your head
Other than the shattered glass of a windshield
I wonder what was the last thing that went through your head when you left.

I wonder what was the last thing the bartender thought
When he watched you get into your car.
I wonder what the last thing the paramedics thought when they declared you gone.

I remember back to 2009 and I wonder if you knew we beat Gears.
The next day, you asked me if I was ready to continue.
I don't think you knew.

So now here I am, five months later, drunk in the mirror,
Praying Mom doesn't wake up to find me,
Practicing slam poetry with my own reflection,

And I wonder what the last thing that went through your head was,
And I remember sirens, and cop cars, and ambulances, and you were almost home,
And I try to make up characters to take your place in stories.

I name the characters Austin, and Brian, and Joshua, and Mike.
I name them anything to help distance what I write about them to what you were.
But your name was Trevor. I remember your name.

I remember everything about you.
I remember you stumbling home at 2 AM
I remember you lighting cigarettes outside the house hoping I wouldn't see.

Your name was Trevor.
And no matter what I write into my stupid ******* stories at six in the morning
You're gone.

Your name was Trevor
And no matter how hard I try, squinting through drunken tears at six in the morning
You're gone.

Your name was Trevor
And no matter what happens
I'll miss you until I'm dead next to you.

And I know you're watching me from Heaven,
But I don't actually think you made it too Heaven.
I don't think you were quite the Saint I like to pretend.

Because your name was Trevor
And you died at 4:32 AM, December 19th, 2018,
Drunk as ****, headfirst into a street lamp.

And you were almost, almost, almost,
As drunk as I am tonight,
Playing back memories of you and I in 2009.

Your name was Trevor
I hope you made it to Heaven.
Your name was Trevor.

Enter Scene:

A boy rests his head on his left fist,
His elbow propped up on the black IKEA desk.
The desk is worn, several quarter-sized holes and dents
Pocking the boy’s writing surface.
The worst holes are covered by the yellow legal pad he writes in.
He taps a disposable pen against his chin as he thinks.

“To whom it may concern,” he starts, pausing.
The pen hovers above the comma as he considers,
Should it be capitalized? Too formal? Change it to “Dear”?
He tears away the page, tossing it into the trash can to his left.
It joins the other crumpled pages, his last attempts.
First, second, third, fourth, fifth draft suicide notes.

He brings his head away from his fist and cracks his knuckles.
The note has to be perfect. It’s his final words.
His last hurrah. His confessional script to everyone he’s ever known.
Overthinking the words, desperate to make them perfect.
The same desperation that has him writing the note to begin with,
But so long as he’s dissatisfied with the note, he’s safe.