someone should ask almost about being whole

I should be building my future from lego bricks
but all I have are little bits of you sneaking up on me with the subtlety
that was only your gift. you were never the silent type but if there was ever
a wildfire in someone's head, we all knew it was you.

this isn't poetry, this is you.

you only read well, your clumsi-
-ness so contagious - no this isn't
honesty, this is poet suburbia, you never
mess with that - your storms always
quiet enough to sneak past every
single one of us.

do you still blame us for remembering you?

your voice was deeper than the Mariana trench -
no it's not in my fucking skin, how many times
has that line worked for you? - and towards
the terminal of that long distance phone call
it had thinned into the frail breathing of a departure,
so shocking but nowhere near
surprising.

he said I don't need to be ready, but fucking hell,
I was always halfway there, wasn't I?

for once, I was glad you didn't call death a character
from the Book Thief. so yes, you were always
there and it caught all our envy in a fish-net.

well, no one ever leaves when they're ready.

your body cried then and it was inaudible. you
thought I knew because we were meant to be and no,
it was because you hinted just enough for me,
you loved just enough of me to care back
and tell you to fuck off before I did it myself.

don't fucking miss me.

little did you know
that we really didn't.

I waited in those pretentious purple hours before and after twilight
for your oh-so-literary soul to come and haunt me without
the cancer black clouding half of your face. you tapped my window once,
thinking you were still frail, but you broke
it and you broke
me. [don't] you broke
us.

we were no wolf pack but we were going to [live] die together
we were going to stay in titanium-plated houses for the last meteor to crash
we were going to leave our little bits for Hansel to lose track of
and now

we're pressed under fifty pounds of earth
quiet, lingering, making
our own Mariana trenches
till God finds us straying

we won't. don't talk back to Him when he asks what took you so damned long.