1.
Collapsing in on myself like a dying star.
The hole left by your absence:
fucked up, permanent, never-ending.
2.
The loss of your youth
lodged in the back of my throat
like a moth encased in amber:
How strange to be forever twenty-four
to fixate on a place in time,
to be trapped there,
to be a static point,
how nice it is too, then, to never
disappoint, to
remain unchanged,
cut short, kept clean,
dust in the wind
blown all through time and space,
the baby,
always the baby,
never having to grow up.
3.
Your last text message is still on my phone,
seven years unanswered.
4.
Shared blood,
shared meaning,
shared space
until there wasn't.
You're still my favorite part of me.
5.
I dream of the woman in San Fransisco
with your heart,
I want to put my head to her chest,
I want to tell her how soft
and loyal and funny
yours was.
6.
Fourteen days from twenty-five,
time eats itself slowly and some
days
it feels like I will be losing
fragments of you,
forever.
7.
What stays
and
what disappears?
Fourteen days from twenty-five,
right when life was opening
up
like a desert bloom unfurled
after a long needed rain:
The last time I heard your voice
I was in Surf Ride in Carlsbad Village,
you called me on the phone, I
walked around touching soft things, listening
to you tell me you couldn't come
to my graduation, but you'd
make it up to me somehow.
What
stays
and
what
disappears:
The last time I saw you
we ate dinner together, we stayed out
late, we laughed on a street corner,
we stole puffs from a vape, we
talked about the future like it
would come clean, like
it wasn't a question, like we knew
what it meant, like discovery
was still possible, like anything
was still possible, like
we could change things, like
we could figure them out,
like there would be space,
like there would be time,
if only the rain would come, if
only things could bloom,
if only time
kept moving.
I stayed
and you disappeared
but sometimes it feels like
the opposite, sometimes
it still feels like I'm the
one disappearing,
like the hole you made when you
left
is
going to
swallow me up.