I like the abstract because of how boring death is. I like those poems Berryman wrote raging into the center of an impossible universe. They are apparently digging up Neruda to see if the goons of the free-market posioned him with a dose of what they call, “the real world.” Sometimes I hate hearing about Buddhism because I can’t stand the idea that I’m just another part of how awful everything is. I’m okay with sitting below a tree though. In my mind, there are branches everywhere. The point is to open up into oneself like an absolute flower.
A day later I found Felix on top of a chair with a bed sheet twisted into a noose snug around his neck that was tied to a light fixture in the bathroom. When he took a step forward the room went completely dark. I carried him to the hospital 16 blocks away dragging the noose along the street like an anchor. Ten years later, they found two halves of him on opposite sides of the Colorado River. His obituary was the smallest one in the paper, and because of this, I think of people mistaking him for an advertisement or a wanted ad. Sometimes I feel like I’m still in that room I first found him in and by now it’s so dark that I can’t help but confuse that room for my entire life.
Our private lives are ample to us as we are outside looking for a new line between the shore and the land. The shore being what we want and the land being what’s left. There’s a mystery of a black dog buried deep in my youth I fear will never be solved. It, like what surrounds it, is dead. The rain, eventually, punishes and becomes, everything. The sound I created for it smacking and punctuating the ocean leaves a hole in my heart so big it’s no longer a hole but a way of passage. Back at home I turn on a light with little resolve and know that Emily is no longer here. Her empty chair stares at me like the cry of a cicada there’s not enough summer left to explain.