How can I prepare myself for the loss of you?
Even as I watch your slow undoing,
the unmendable cracks and fissures surfacing
like ice in Spring bleeding water,
then reforming in the chill of night
only to melt in the morning sun.
Are we all Icarus?
Rising too high in flight,
or never high enough,
never far enough to sate the yearning.
The journey is always too short
and I will never forget the words
you said to me...
reaching hard for an explanation
that might suffice
to why I could not follow,
could not visit
in the place where you would go,
not another sterile hospital room,
not another cold facsimile of comfort
with too much citrus
masking the stench of decay
and that thing we never talk about honestly
even as our minds recognize the smell.
You said: I can't know you right now
and astonished me once more
with the articulate nature of your bouts of clarity.
Even when it seemed your mind had been redrawn by Picasso,
each cubic molecule rearranged and painted
in an unrecognizable constellation
I would not know you
the way I wished I could,
with the compassionate understanding of a friend
born of the same time,
but I loved you still
for the usual irrational reasons:
warm hugs, saltine crackers, and peppermint,
a shared appreciation of Christmas trees tied in ribbon
My whole lifetime of stories and holidays.
Is it greedy to want more?
Is it selfish to wonder
what we would have thought of one another
if we could really know each other
outside the constructs of our birth order.
Instead I remember the warmth of your hand in mind,
the paper softness to your skin,
the gentle strength in your voice
when you would read to me,
only to realize that I have known you,
and the knowing
will outlast the pain
of never
knowing
you
long
enough.
