My heart is heavy,
Candles lit
For a reunion that will never come.
Where are you?
Who are you?
Does your smile still take up your whole face?
You left something
When you left.
There’s no lost and found
It seems you never noticed it was gone.
Perhaps you read the eulogy in solitude.
It’s being held onto with care,
Just in the event the wind blows a memory your way and the longing makes its way
From me
To you.
We’re under the same moon
And that is enough to soothe
Despite a lonesome tear finding its way
Into my ear tonight.

My goodbye has never entered the air.

Tight black dress
with red hair draped
on shoulders small but strong

I'm not ignorant
I'm just lost

Why would I drive
fifteen minutes
to secure the table
for 30
in a realm where
we could've won
so many more
and laughed over
many more lost
because at the end of the day
nobody actually cares who
is stripes or solids
just play when it's your
god ****** turn
and don't knock over
the quarters

fuzzy
silly
subtle numb,
a punch or ****
the same.
locked in on a face
but
on the side they call
your name!
look in that way and see a
group you've never
seen before,
but not a care, you
start your lonesome trek across the
floor.
some shoulder shakes
and footwork
you approach them in
your stride,
and now new faces
fill the yearbook
you keep deep inside

Chipped and wonky
donkey
Nails are grabbing on the cue.
You'd sink that **** if only
in your head it wasn't you.
Bounced off the wall then stipe then sink,
"Go, killer"
Slow you roll
'Cuz 8 ball next and if you miss
you'll blame it on your soul

I don’t know where you are. In life or in thought.

You carved me.
Not into the soft fabrics of stone, Michelangelo’s passion project,
but in the chest caving way that echos across years
and states
and moments I can’t trace, but still feel shaped by you.

There’s parts of you in most I meet, and everyone that knows me will know aspects of the you I once knew.

We never broke, and though wilted, the flower never died.
We unraveled. Quietly, circumstantially, slowly, in ways that never made sense out loud. A boat tethered in a still wake, just climate enough to disintegrate the fibers. A brisk breeze, never windy enough to cause national alert.

And that’s what’s made it so hard to let go.
No fight, no final draw. Just… silence.
Stillness in a room that once danced.
Swayed sacred memories under a Scotch taped mistletoe. My once eggnog grin boy.

I’ve looked for you in places I know you’d never be.
Cramped hands scribbling thoughts I won’t send.
I’ve read your words and heard them in the faint memory of your voice.
You told the history of us in stanzas.
I’ve carried the epilogue of us since, so you can hone in your next plot.

I think I’d want to ask nothing.
Just watch you breathe.
See what time has softened, and learn how Plan B became Option F.
Shake your hand, like we’re meeting again. Detention divvy in the cafeteria round two, yet not starting over, but seeing clearly as we’ve become.

I don’t expect that moment will ever come.
I needed this not for reply,
but release.

You were my first mirror.
My first awe into ache.
And I think, in a way, you’ll always be.
God ****** that wake.
It’s time for me to stop waiting cave-side for echoes. The occasional ping in my heart pager is plenty.

I hope you’re loved in the ways you couldn’t ask for yet, and all of those thoughts have found safe, understanding hands. Ones that mark color into your inked rib flowers on occasion, and the snake not remind you of me.

Perhaps if I understood more of those too-long-car-ride convos.
I’m shoulding on myself.

I hope laugh still covers your face, and your brows scrunch into your nose.
I hope you feel free, and the flight wasn’t stifled by a storm along the way.
I hope if you think of me, it’s with a faint yellow softness, not a sting.

It’s impossible to forget, but I must rid myself from the weight of remembering alone.
There’s no gym routine that fills the space, but watering cans to garden around the museum of us.