And so the sun begins its final setting In that final twilight a transformation US becomes YOU and ME Without pomp or party The bittersweet return to ourselves Unwoven and remade Hopes already decaying underground Receive no grave marker Hard won freedom and quietly resonating loss We are becoming reluctant singularities This fading light falls upon the final paragraph in the book of us Two new books await Unmarred by pain and tears I wish I could say there will be no mourning There is a hole where the unwritten life was excised A wound where the light just doesn't reach and never will I am told this is not unreasonable Deeply feeling people cannot stop feeling Life is nowhere near so black and white to allow for such I send with you the last of my hope Hope you will find your way Hope you will learn to heal your fractures Hope you can become the father you wanted to be As the calendar counts down The minutes marching relentlessly by I reflect on my love for you that never died It just couldn't thrive or survive the wreckage we became We have forever marked each other with kisses and scars As stamp and ink erases us I gratefully return you to your own keeping And truly wish you well
For days I've been thinking about your birthday About how I've not been able to be available for all of your calls lately How I was going to send you a present Or FaceTime you and hope you'd be able to pick up the call I was trying to figure out how to annoy you on your birthday Since I couldn't blow up your phone with 49 gifs I was still thinking these thoughts when your mom called When I saw the black screen with the white letters that read "Mrs. Young"
It was a type of deja vu Like that call two autumns ago The one out of the blue that informed me You had a catastrophic stroke A bitter and belated present for your 47th birthday I answered this call, like the last, to your mom's calm and sweet voice The one with business in its foundation Like before, she lead with pleasantries as she likes to do And I braced Then came what I dreaded "I have news. I have sad news." And the world stopped turning for those seconds "My son is gone." My friend was gone YOU were gone Just... No longer here
You slipped your tether and escaped this life For as much as I wanted you to be free To not be in a body that had betrayed you To not be struggling with everyday living I believed in you I believed you would fight your way to better I held no illusions that you would be fully restored But you would find a new normal and thrive And we'd laugh at stupid things Debate Star Trek canon And talk about how you would move here or there How you would be an engineer, mathematician, animator We would talk about esoteric ideas We would reminisce on the potential of our childhoods And the disappointments of our adulthoods And how the next chapters would be what we wanted them to be
We were suppose to cheer each other on You were supposed to see your namesake grow into a man with his brothers You were supposed to celebrate with me when I finalized my divorce You were supposed to come visit my new home You were supposed to be here Forgive me that I do not find any solace in knowing you will still do those things That you will laugh with me and stand by me I know I should be grateful for the extra time of the last 2 years For the broken reconnection we were able to have But it wasn't nearly enough And now I don't know what to do Or how to feel And all I can do is write this stupid poem Because I cannot hear your excited giggle anymore Because I cannot tell you happy birthday
We met during what was arguably the greatest year in music: 1984 I feel like the radio has gone terribly silent 41 years later But you have the last laugh That ridiculous song from a mid-90s summer won't get out of my head Ron C's Dookie Booty That absolutely terrible song you blasted in your way-too-hot Jetta As we rode down El Camino Real on the way to Lee's Comics You bought the core book for Vampire the Masquerade that day We laughed at how your parents would likely hate that book And we laughed every time you'd replay that dumb ass song
This poem is as chaotic and messy as my heart I am grateful for your release and I am mad as hell I understand nothing in this wrongness of your death That word feels like sandpaper on my soul in reference to you I love you I'm sorry that I couldn't love you they way you so badly wanted You better say hello but remember I don't do ghosts or disembodied voices I instead do dreams and symbols and knowings
I wanted to write odes to my friends while they were still here I write this ode for you because I just don't know what else to do Because feelings are too big And words are too insignificant But they are all I have None of this feels fair All I know is the world is so still without you Without the sound of your voice answering my "Happy Birthday"
My significant other Is more other than significant now I wish I felt better about this fact I do not miss the now of him I’m still in love with the then of him When love knocks you can never know The beauty or horror in its entourage You believe love can conquer all And learn that love is often not enough My significant other left A significant mark on me That is hardly insignificant
I realize that this year’s Christmas Will be my first in decades without you That shatters me like a dropped ornament I wanted us to be a Hallmark holiday romantic comedy But we were, instead, a Nancy McKeon movie of the week This year is heavy with disappointment Like that of not finding that hoped for gift beneath the tree Or the disillusionment of learning Santa Is just your parents’ amateur slight of hand Or that moment in Love Actually when Emma Thompson Opens her gift to discover it's a Joni Mitchell CD Instead of the expensive necklace that Alan Rickman Bought for his sexy secretary instead of his loving wife You keep trying to gift me expired I love yous I let them fall to the ground like dry pine needles Christmas lights wear glimmering halos From the tears that well when the Carpenters croon Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas I will not hang your stocking Or buy you a well-considered gift I will, however, cast a Christmas wish For you to dream of better days As you nestle in an unfamiliar bed That old St. Nick blesses you With a better life ahead
You have said a lifetime's worth of, "I love you" in the last ten months I remember that you rarely said it in the twenty-three years When I needed to hear it like my blood needed oxygen What am I to do with your, "I love you" now Now that I cannot love you anymore Oh! My heart still loves you Still wrings drops of hope from itself Hope hanging heavy from tear tracts To be wiped bitterly away Because there is no hope left Hope is just a tether Preventing me from moving on From acknowledging the truth that The third body is dead and has been for a long time Love's hope nearly destroyed me Consumed me My heart will not let me pry this foolish hope from her hands So instead, I have to lock it away In the dark, cold, empty cavity that is my chest Heart unable to comprehend that I do this for our own good It screams and howls in the echoing silence "One last chance!" "One more time!" "Maybe this time! Maybe! Just maybe!" "I love you" manifests no magic here "I love you" will not call forth a miracle for us I still love you, Too But I HAVE to love me, MORE
Words Wishes and Wisdom 