a week after you died i wrote you into a poem
sitting in a room full of unfamiliar faces
choking on grief and words filling my head
i could hear you talking, smooth and sweet and heavy,
somewhere deep in mixed memories of warm nights
and loud music caged in hazardous caverns of back mind thought
yet you creeped up sounding loud from the small of my back,
lodging in the arch of my neck for a moment
and then rushing through along my cheekbones—
your sound lighting my face and then fading.
i wanted to shed my skin
to make the buzzing stop,
to run away
from the sound of you
from the child in your face that would never smile like that again
dying in that room as your sightsound possessed my veins
taking my oxygen, stealing my blood—red thick and hungry.
i had no other choice in the middle of a discussion
of the women of Juarez--older ghosts unlike you
i frantically ripped out a page and tattooed you on its lines
thinking maybe then i wouldn’t have to think
of those last moments filled with fire, loneliness, and the radio
fading out—tears and no goodbyes to anyone but the sky
maybe i wouldn’t have to remember
how your voice infused my body with light and sugar
when you whispered in my ear
thinking maybe i wouldn’t have to lie awake
at night wondering why existence is really only a fatal road trip.
sitting at that desk i wanted to cry,
baptize the pages with my own river of life
make up for the destruction of yours--empty riverbed.
my pen flamed across the page, darting and drawing you
in letters and pauses
i finished brow furrowed and tear strained tired
i shoved you in a notebook not wanting to look at you there on the page,
not wanting you to scar me any longer or deeper
a week later i went to look at you,
read the poem on some fatalistic therapeutic urge
and you were gone—more than forever this time
i tore through my notebook my room my clothes
thinking i could not survive without that piece of paper
and now you were gone, the only remnants i had left
lost on some ragged street,
thrown in some solitary garbage can,
found in the hands of a stranger
how easily you were lost,
i tried to rewrite you
struggling through teary sight and trembling hands,
but it was never as perfect as the first one
i couldn’t get your smile right
or the tone of your voice
or the way you walked
or the words you spoke
i tried so hard but you never came through that clear again,
despite the numerous attempts I have made
to write your face to face you
i hope some stranger found my lost poem
written in pure feeling and electric light
and it burns his palms as he reads it
for one moment he sees you there
in the words and the spaces and the light.
he sees you through my veins and wonders
where the beautiful boy has gone
as he tries to shake my sadness—EAC
