Your best friend died and you didn’t want me at his funeral.
Your best friend died on a sunny summer afternoon.
I remember I was tanning outside,
I could feel the drops of chlorine evaporate from my skin
because it was so hot.
Too hot for birds to chirp,
too hot for kids to be out on the playground,
for the sound of their laughter to fill the
dead hours of the afternoon.
In those dead hours of the afternoon
your best friend died.
And his wife immediately called you.
Out of helplessness,
she picked up the phone and dialed the last person he had called.
You.
Your best friend died and you called me too. Even though, if I glanced up, I could see you from our living room window.
“Steve died” is all you said
My words were lost to the heat.
Eventually I remember offering to come up but you told me not to.
I should have learned by then that sometimes it’s better not to listen. Not to believe that every word you say, you truly mean.
Your best friend died
and, after a year, you get to celebrate him
one more time.
He’ll be buried with fighters – with heroes.
He saved you once.
Your best friend died a year ago
and today I’m a stranger.
A stranger that still wants to hold your hand
while you stand with both feet in the muddy ground,
and tears that you won’t let out in front of anyone.
Today I’m a stranger
but I still want to be the one to hold you while your whole body quivers
with grief you won’t address.
Your best friend died about a year ago.
And I recklessly left you not long after that.
Yet today, I want
to iron your black suit and wipe your mud stained shoes
and tell you that I won’t leave too.
