Everything Heavy Again

Once, in Tijuana, I wandered the streets searching for the skeleton of a bullhead. I wanted to hang it on my wall and wrap dead flowers around its horns. I walked up and down Avenida Revolución, sweating in the hot Mexican sun. My English thoughts twisting themselves in my brain until I could find their Spanish counterparts. I went to every market. When I couldn’t find what I was looking for, I bought a fake Botero painting and decided to go home.

Here is how it happened: I was walking down the sidewalk trying to avoid the pushy men who were trying to sell everything to me: watches, jewelry, sugar skulls painted in bright colors. I was trying to not run into the children, begging me for money, their small hands grabbing at my legs. I was walking down the street and glanced into a store window and it is there that I thought I saw you, standing behind a counter. I stopped moving and the entire Tijuana metropolis shut up. There were no men with their fake gold watches, no children with scars on their faces, no donkeys painted as zebras. I stood there frozen in a daydream, letting the hallucination fully consume me. My entire being became lucent as if someone turned on a light in a pitch-black room. As if the darkness of the last sixteen months ceased to exist.

The idea that you were still alive. The idea that I could reach out and touch you. I almost fainted, cried, laughed, melted into the sidewalk. I have never felt that kind of euphoria: my heart pounding, hands sweating. I lost all sense of myself and the Mexico heat. I let the idea of your life wash the fucked up weight of your death completely off me. I felt okay again.

Suddenly, the man came out from behind the counter. His leg amputated at the knee. He motioned for me to come inside, buy a watch, he said, they are nice, real gold, buy it now, sixty American dollars. His words split open the silence: the weight of the world and the weight of your death suddenly returning to my bones. Everything heavy again. I had no choice but to just keep walking.

II

Sometimes I’ll just be going about my day and there will be this sudden recognition of your absence. It becomes hard to breathe for a moment. Time stops.

I’ll see a mid-twenties kid with a crew cut and imagine him as you. I sit outside in the quiet and feel the wind brush up against me and remember what it’s like to be alive. I remember what it’s like to be the one between us that still exists.

I try to imagine what you would be doing if you were still here. I try to imagine the shape our relationship would have taken if it had been allowed the space and time to keep growing. I think of the things I wish I could ask and tell you. Sometimes I’ll say them out loud so they don’t have to go unspoken. I hate to admit it but I wonder if you’re listening somehow. If the wind carries you within it.

Can you feel me? I still think of you constantly—I see it as a secret betrayal if a day goes by that I don’t. I imagine how you would have felt and grieved and grown if it had been me that had been killed and not you.

After two years, I wish I had some sort of clarity. Sometimes it still feels like I’m crawling around in the dark. Like there is pain inside of me that has sunk deep into my bones, that no time will ever soften. It only grows deeper with each day that I’m reminded of all the things in my life that I won’t ever be able to share with you. It only grows deeper when I remember that I don’t get to ever see you again.

The ocean of anger and helplessness still wells up inside of me. I still fight to not drown in it’s current. It still ebbs and flows the way it always has.

I still miss you as much as I always have. As I always will. As I always will have to.

Only in Dreams

I dreamt you were a bird:

all feathers,

the soft feel of the pluck.

Picking seed out of my teeth.

Your eyes as two black stones,

your beak as hard as bone,

your hair coarse in-between my fingers.

I loved you just the same,

as this body

or that,

as one animal

or the other.

Our love like flight,

our love like a million wings

spreading the breadth of a bedroom,

our love like a wing span made of time,

caging and releasing you over and over

just to make sure that you were mine.

The Space Between Moments

We watch a play where all of the actors on stage

are previous lovers.

I tie my hair tightly into a bun

and feel it as it comes undone,

it unfurls like a thousand birds spreading their wings

into the wind.

I have a dream that you are a bird

and that our love is like flight:

it spans the breadth of a bedroom.

I write a poem about caging and releasing you over and over again

just to make sure that you are mine,

but I write it by hand and my penmanship could never be as beautiful

as what I am trying to say and so I throw it away.

Sometimes I just want you to ask me how my day is going.

I won’t even reply because if I open my mouth a swarm of bees will come out,

the honey so thick you would never be able to hear

the resolve in my voice.

Viscous.

When I’m feeling frustrated I look up words in the thesaurus:

tenacious, thick, tough, mucilaginous.

We watch a play where all of the actors on stage pretend

that they are the only people left on Earth

and we start to believe them.

I grab your hand but it is not your hand

because you are not inside of there.

Tell me where you go when you are underneath me

and there is this smile dancing across your lips

as if you have found a stray thread

and have begun to unravel something.

Tell me that it is not me

that you are picking apart.

Life & Limb

I’m sorry to

the tree that we carved our names into

the irreversible and permanent damage

that we did to the landscapes

of one another—

the inevitable destruction

all for a passing moment.

Isn’t that just like love?

I’m sorry to

the roads that we traveled,

your affection

bending and turning

as I lost control

around the hairpin curves

of

everything you said

and then

everything you did

and then

everything you couldn’t bring yourself

to realize—

I’m sorry

that I forged my way through

the topography

of your mind,

so it should come as no surprise

that one of us would eventually

crash and burn.

I still think that it should have

been you.

Isn’t that

just like

love?

Sometimes

a moth to the flame,

but even after all this time,

more so like

a lamb to the slaughter.

Asking the Important Questions

1.

Do you ever find yourself

just waiting

for things to end?

This river trail is beautiful

but I want it to be over.

2.

Is this

how distance

hurts?

There are bluebells

growing alongside the highways

in Texas

but nobody ever talks about them.

They remind me

of your eyes.

I pick one and press it in-between

the pages of a book.

I wait patiently

for it to die.

It softens over

the hundreds of miles

between us

and so do I.

3.

Is this how closeness

draws out the silence

that lays dormant

inside of you?

Back home,

you’re crying in my bed

at five in the morning.

The light is creeping in

through the blinds.

I watch as tears collect

in the creases

near the corners

of your eyes.

Small and painful

attestations

to the heaviness

of time.

Domesticity

I read Camus

in your bathtub

on our second date.

You draw the water too hot

but I sit in it anyway,

my skin burning.

Outside,

the world decides

to light itself on fire

but being with you

helps me to forget.

I notice that there is black mold

growing on your bathroom ceiling,

but I keep forgetting

to ask you about it.

Instead,

I imagine plucking the spores off

one by one,

passing them from my tongue

to yours.

They blossom inside of us

into a beautiful,

flowering colony.

Our love exponentially

multiplies.

Outside,

there is an entire world

that I have forgotten

how to see

but being with you

reminds me

that there are still reasons

to keep my eyes open.

In the shower,

I raise my arms

and let you wash me

in the places that I am sure

are not dirty,

but all I can think is that I want you

to make me clean again.

Outside,

there is an entire world

that remains closed

but being with you

reminds me that

cracking yourself open

is the only way to grow.

The Softest Part

Lately, I have been thinking about what I wrote about your death—about how even if I traveled the entire earth and touched every single thing, none of them would be you. I realize how wrong I had been about that. You are still alive all around me—our shared blood forever coarsing through my fingertips. Loving you is the softest, best part of me. The part I wouldn’t trade for anything. Maybe I can’t grab a beer with you anymore, or share disgusting foods with you, or sneak cigarettes with you in parking lots. Maybe I can’t scold you for being an asshole sometimes, or for not wearing your motorcycle helmet, or for having too many margaritas at Mariscos Las Palmas. Maybe I can’t take back telling you it was okay for you to skip my graduation, I can’t take back not trying hard enough to convince you not to move, I can’t take back never answering your last text message. Maybe I lost all of those things, but I haven’t lost you. You’re everywhere, in everything. All around me. The best parts.

Christmas

I found a small

wooden reindeer

ornament with your

name written in a pretty

cursive font across

the front.

Painted and

cut so delicately,

I put it

in-between my teeth.

I

mulled it

through my fingertips

until I could feel some of the

dust mix with the oil

in my skin.

I sat on the carpet

of my new apartment

cross-legged. I

put the ornament

across from me and

let it look straight

at me, I waited

for it to speak,

I waited

for it to tell me

how you have been doing or

that you miss me but

it didn’t feel much like

talking

and I understood.

Here is the crazy part:

I felt sorry for it.

It was small and cut from cheap wood

and it was probably never your favorite

ornament from all of the extravagant ones

your mother bought you, it probably

never meant too much.

But

here it was

in a place you’ve never been,

representing our shared life,

our shared possessions, our

shared meaning.

It wouldn’t speak to me and

I understood because you

won’t speak to me either.

It’s okay, I don’t feel

much like talking.