I still remember the softness of your touch.
You told me you didn’t have long--
your skin ghastly pale.
I didn’t care; I only felt love.
I wanted to fight away the disease crippling
your every thought, your every creation.
I thought that if I could love you
I could make you better

And so I stayed, holding your hand,
whispering away your demons,
singing you a crooked lullaby,
just so the tears would subside.
Tell me,
would I take that all back?
I don’t know.
I think about the abandoned coffee shops and smashed cigarettes
I think about your piano
and how you couldn’t really play that well
but that never stopped you.
I wonder if I had been somewhere else
our paths would have crossed.
Would you still call me your darling girl,
after cursing about my chubby cheeks
and my sailor mouth
and why I couldn’t pick up after my goddamn self??

Did I know?
Oh, of course I knew
that you never meant to hurt me
or to kill me,
but here I am,
and here you are.

Your toxins entered my bloodstream and made me someone new entirely.
Some people say
that late at night, when we used to lay on our backs
and talk s*** on everyone we knew,
your subtle footsteps can be heard
almost as if you are looking for something or
for someone.
And then they tell me that it is me,
that you actually really loved me,
that we embarked on our own tragedy.
Together.
Hand-in-hand.

When people call you foul and full of ill intentions
I think about the time you kissed my finger
after smashing my hand
deep deep into the dry wall.
Just kidding--
you did always call me delusional.

Wherever you find yourself these days
(probably meditating to some beat poems)
think about my stupid lopsided smile
every time you threatened to leave
or to tell the whole world
that I wasn’t who I seemed to be.
Each night, each night,
I extend my arms and cry your name
expecting you to tell me to shut the hell up.
But I can barely speak anymore,
and my legs are glued together
and my mind, oh my mind,
thinks of all your blueprints.
When you got an idea in that crazy head
you made this hilarious face
but what I never told you
I never will be able to,
not ever, not ever again.
I remember you, hunched over your desk,
designing something profound--
or so you said.
Your pencil danced against the paper
and I retreated softly for bed,
hoping that just maybe
you just once thought of me.

The day that you died--
it’s like I never saw it coming
even though you told me half a million times:
“Darling, I’m dying.”
I guess it’s kind of like
when they say you never know what you have until it’s gone.
Well, I knew what I had most of the way through
even when you weren’t really mine to begin with.
I wandered around that entire night
through alleyways and crack houses
and I know what you’re thinking--
that I absolutely wasn’t.
But it just felt right to me
to abandon my world for a bit
and dip into someone else’s,
just like it felt right to you
to interrupt my child-like wonder
and tell me
that the world doesn’t owe anyone favors,
that I wouldn’t always get what I wanted--
no one ever did.

Fifty five floors
so many doors
being opened and closed, opened and closed.
A baby is crying in the next room
and he reminds me of you.
Entirely--
so full of life, a whole book unwritten.
Do you see me?
Do you see me?
It has been twenty minutes and my throat is the Sahara,
or the Aral Sea (did you know it was dried up?).
You actually didn’t tell me that one.
And you actually were the best thing to happen to me,
even if I never was good enough
and you made me indescribably ill.

I threw some daisies on your grave and said some nice things
and then I went home and read some Plath.
She was your hero
even though you were positive and she was negative.
Do you remember when I wrote you a poem
and you crumbled it up and tossed it in the trash
and I laughed,
because that was the first time that day you noticed me?
Speaking of noticing things
did your eyes start getting foggy?
It is almost if the world is blurring around me--
these words are bobbing up and down--
like a fish in the sea
(but not the Aral Sea, since there’s no more water.)
And speaking of no more water
the nurse hasn’t been here in quite some time
and I still miss you.

I once gave a man a black eye
because he said you deserved everything
because he looked at me when he said it--
and you want to know the worst part?
He wasn’t even your neighbor
or your brother.
He didn’t even know your middle name or your favorite song.
The man
wrestled me to the ground
and when they tried to cuff me,
they felt my pulse
and knew you intoxicated my body.
So that’s why they ran and never looked back.
Are you happy?
I know you never supported violence, no matter the means,
but I still don’t think you were a bad person.
And if I didn’t defend you
who would?

Wine always burned my throat
and cigarettes made it harder to breathe,
but when I was with you I couldn’t breathe, anyways
so it all evened out.
I’ll never forget when you looked at me,
grey eyes so much more than stones,
and said with so much honesty,
“You will go far;
you will go far;
further than I ever have.
You are brilliant
even when you say and do stupid things
that really make me question
why I put up with you.
If you continue
then so will I.”
And for the life of me I can’t remember
if you had yet been diagnosed.
Nonetheless
I will never forget that night
even when I become a part of the earth,
or a part of the sky.
No one ever knows for sure.

Before I allow the world to go dark, I think of you
and you would be yelling at me right now.
“Be remembered! Be remembered!” you’d scream feverishly.
And so I creep out of the hospital bed
into the city streets.
Mind you, I am just short of blind
and my ears ring
and my head must be on fire.
I cannot continue;
it must end here.
I throw myself onto the ground,
curling weakly into a ball.
Shielding myself.
People pass, shoot looks,
and I feel the world slide away from me--

Before I catch on fire like the rest of my body
a cool hand presses against me.
All wars have ceased.
And I know that
it must be you,