they say our tree may never grow back

& somehow i found myself surrounded by stained glass in an old church near the mediterranean sea. & for two euros i could light a candle to mother mary & that was such a small price to pay to remember you for a moment. & look, i know you’re not out there somewhere and that there’s no 

reunion waiting for us on the other side but that singular flame in the cavernous cathedral momentarily moved a veil between you & your memory. & i think you would have approved of the act & not as some kind of prayer because i swore at your funeral that i’d never do that again but as a 

magic trick played out to the end—misdirection & deception. & i left that candle burning in a french church during a summer when the heat rose & never seemed to settle like the guilt i try to burry in my gut—a sacrament to the nothing that is to come. & later i floated in the azure waters of a 

sea thousands of miles from my home & marveled at how i came to be in that moment. & all the choices we make that form the days of these lives—the one that continues & the one that fell into the grass of a backyard i’ll never know. & i’ll light another candle any chance i get if it means i still 

remember.

i saw my dead friend the other day 

& asked how he’s been 

& he just smiled in a way that wasn’t 

too different from the way he looked 

when we were still young 

& i made a mistake with my rook 

that set him up for another victory 

in a long line of checkmates 

& give ups, cause the dead can’t change 

so it’s just me who’s left 

to wrestle with what was 

& what will be 

& the holding on 

& letting go that comes with time 

& cracks in the dry winter skin i wear 

as an identifier & my dead friend 

kept walking down the sidewalk 

towards the corner store 

& the sunset’s struggle to be seen

& i called out one more time 

for an answer to the all of it all 

& without turning back he said, 

“did you see the new blooms 

on the camellia tree this morning?”  

You filled my spot 

for a little while

after Brett kicked me 

out of the band I started. 

I resented you 

for a time 

but never blamed you. 

Once we started playing

together, I saw why

the change was made 

and I knew I couldn’t hang. 

So I worked hard 

to make myself necessary 

in other areas. 

I never understood 

why you played with us 

when you could 

have had so much more. 

It’s taken time but

I’ve come to see

that’s what friends do. 

i miss the version of you 

we lost twenty years before 

you took that final fall 

in your backyard. 

i don’t really want to 

remember the last picture 

of your melancholy—

              empty cabinets, 

              reckless driving, 

              boxed red wine, 

              and ketamine. 

so i’m choosing to remember 

the oppressive nature 

of your body odor 

when you slept in the bunk 

below me and we fell asleep 

every night to The Simpsons. 

the smell was awful 

coming from the blanket 

cave you made 

where I think you 

              thought of April, 

              slept soundly,

              studied the bible, 

              and masturbated 

in shame, like we all did.