GMA,
You always told me to write it all down. So here I am, giving my words to the world, but I’m still addressing things to you.
I wish I could tell you that I love you right now. What never processed to me was the idea of your mortality. You always talk to me about poetry, and now I feel stuck trying to write this poem for you. How do I capture everything you’ve made me? Is there a way to write myself closer to you? I put on Revlon red but it keeps smearing on my face and hands. I have Leonard Cohen on repeat. Last week it was 27 degrees in Boston and I wore your coats, and now I’m home in your house wearing your blouse but I still don’t feel like I’ve reached you.
Time is an illusion that I’m hopelessly devoted to. The weight that comes with time, in its present and its past. How it flies by you after a lifetime of day to day. I’d like to think I’m beyond time, with its restraints and my not paying attention to numbers. But will I look back one day at a path of my past with feelings and visions of red? Will the world be shouting in color? Or will it be stuck in beige and grey? I’m in love with burgundy and narcissists and the idea of there being a right place at the right time.
There’s a space in me that doesn’t even know it’s empty. Grief is hollow in my mind. But also so full. Full of you, the memories of color and chaos are painting smiles on all of our grief ridden faces. I’m so curious where you are now. Are you young again? I know you’d love to be a bird or a squirrel or a duck in a garden somewhere. But you spoke of wanting to be dust and maybe that’s what you are. Maybe souls really do just go to sleep forever. Your love tired of straining, sadness ready to subside; maybe souls really just exist here on Earth.
Or maybe you’re in a different galaxy somewhere? With two heads and two mouths to make your opinions heard from, with sixteen hands so you have time to write down everything you ever wanted to say. My entire life you told me about wanting to be a speck of dust floating through space, but I can’t imagine you ever resting. You’d try floating across the galaxy in a day and be unsatisfied that you could never find the end of it. Are you across the galaxy yet? It feels like you’re everywhere.
2017