Eight Months One Week

10.18.21

there is a sweet spot
where I doze off during my
nightly reruns of seinfeld
where I can’t keep my eyes open any longer
and I shuffle to find the remote
and turn the screen off
and I fall asleep
still with thoughts of you
but not the kind that keep me up
and if I lose this opportunity
If something keeps me up,
a dog barking or a cold draft
thirst for water and none beside me
If I have to get out of bed and use my
five senses again,
Well, then I’ve missed it
and I’m back to where I usually am
exhausted but consumed by
the memory of you
sometimes it is our childhood
christmas at grandma’s or swimming in the creek,
other times it is of our teenage years
the feeling of laughing with you
hysterically, sometimes adulthood…
watching you get married or waiting
for you to show up at sunday dinner
on the worst nights they are of your funeral
flashing visions of your white and gold casket
of the way my throat hurt so bad from weeping
of the videos of you moving, dancing, singing,
plastered on the large screens
of your song, of your wife walking to the
microphone to bravely speak about you,
of our family, faces so long
grimacing in pain
and then I can’t shake it
my throat tightens yet again
and the permanency of your absence is
shocking all over again
and the tears slide from the corners
of my eyes again
eight months and one week
since you left and it is still
unbelievable yet this
insomnia has become a staple
my heart aches for the day where I am not
missing you, where I am not regretting
every possible moment that I could’ve been
with you but I wasn’t
could’ve told you a thousand more times
that you are my best friend
that I love you
that we need you here
we still need you here
I’m tired of my words
of my own voice in my head that
still talks to you
of my moving from one place to another just to find some sense of stability,
but always coming up short because the discontent is inescapable
the grief seems to be growing, changing but still growing,
so I lay here still in darkness
waiting for my eyes to grow heavy enough to slip into sleep and then
wake to begin another day with out you again, yet I am never with out you
because I carry you,
and the absence of you
everywhere I go