letter to a future love

dear,

sitting next to her in bed

thinking of the woman and mother she was . . .

she mutters now.

mumbles, stutters, babbling

off in a language, in a world

she only senses and does not know.

“now – here’s where it tells you everything.”

i hope she is talking to God.

i don’t believe in God,

but i hope she is talking to God.

for a breath i assume His Transcendent Existence,

but run away cursing

his bleak, everyday

manic depression.

still, her smiling face shines my memory:

i see her look down into tangled covers,

reminding it’s time to go somewhere cool,

and all i want is to be there now,

and not here,

watching her departure

through sagging skin,

through inane smiles,

through lost thoughts.

i wish you could have known her,

aside from my salty floods,

aside from my paragraph home movies,

aside from my smile in profile,

and what it does to my nose.

i wish she could have seen you

smile at me smiling at you smiling at me,

and i wish she could have seen

the battles we wash off our necks,

like she did cake off my lip corners.

i wish you could have known her

before triple-negative,

before metastatic and inoperable,

before incurable,

before cancer coursed,

and these words became the Himalayas.

love of mine,

lover of me:

what hurts most

in The Time of All Encompassing Heart Hurt

is that you’re not here yet,

is that i am all alone,

and you’ll never know

my other best friend.

yours,

me