sublimate

i wanted to tell you that this was not the end that this was not the last time i would see you that somehow we would find each other and you would be well and i would feel whole and the things that surround us and keep us far apart would go away that the secret you needed to tell me could stay a secret rather than spill out into the summer ohio air on a green metal bench after a day spent wandering in hopes that we could forget that the end was probably even closer than we thought that even when you began to tell me what you needed to confess that even when i had offered absolution that even when your anger and confusion had transformed into resignation and then wisdom that i wanted to tell you the end would never come and i would make a room in the house i had just bought put your name on a wooden plaque and hang it in above the bed where you would stay when you would come visit on some whirlwind trip that would include every city and country you had ever dreamt of seeing but never got to see that even though everything had said end and end and end this was really and truly and nothing other than the beginning.

the question i wanted to ask you as you lay there in that beanie that you wore after chemo but that i couldn’t because i saw where i was the question after all those nights we talked about things that you can’t tell many people those nights where you were the straight one and i was the queer one and you were the black one and i was the asian one and we had too many reasons why we were never meant to care but then we did anyway because that’s what people do after all those nights where i knew we saw the wholeness in one another i wanted to ask you if this was the redemption you wanted and wished for and did that redemption include or exclude me and peace is something that i knew you would find and did you find it at a cost or a gain because when you went to see the father of all and the father of you at the same time i wanted to ask you does your heaven allow visitors from mine because i will try to find you again in the lightness and darkness and the after glow of the once and if there’s a bouncer i don’t wanna be rude because even though the beginning was an end it doesn’t meant i wont keep looking.

songs
beats
dog-eared books of richly colored heroines
this line was crossed so many times
and in the warmth of solitude
we could hear each other’s breath
the relief of sleep
only i wish to rise