among the wildflowers

I am imagining your beautiful skull
clean and white and gleaming in another forest
as beautiful as when it was covered by your skin
soft and creased and lips puckering to welcome mine

I am imagining the creatures that are feasting on you, much as I clung to the words we shared, the love we shared, surrounding you and enclosing you as you surrounded and enclosed me

You have given yourself to the world as you have yourself to me, completely and unabashedly.

You are the most unselfish person. The only way to continue is to follow your lead.

the backyard at Brian’s – Sundown Wild Forest

Seven months

I have until April first to vacate.
Seven months.
A lot can happen in seven months.
In the past seven months. Let’s see.

Seven months ago I was sorting through every last thing in my apartment. Opening DOOM* boxes from the last moves, from Gary. Purging in order to make myself as small as I ever had done. Making sure to touch every single thing and discard every possible unnecessary so that my life would fit into a motel room and then a camper.

In the past seven months I bought a camper to live in that I can’t keep because now there is no place to put it.

I bought a shed to use as storage and workspace that I had to return because now there is no place to put it.

In seven months I did so many difficult things to make my life possible to live and it was so hard to live that way but I did.

I had so much help and advice and support along the way in those seven months and you were here through all of it and now you are gone.

Talk to someone you trust.
You are who I trust.
I just want to stay.
I have seven months to figure out how.
Who do I talk to if not you?
Where do I go now?
What do I do?

I am, once again, frozen.
How do I move forward?
This is the third day that I have sat here on this porch, immobilized by uncertainty, cat in my lap.

I am trying so hard to do as prescribed, to think positively, to stop focusing on the sadness but how can I when it is everywhere.

I call up those good feelings I have, those truly joyful feelings, try to soak in them. but without stability they just flicker and fall away. Even when I am surrounded by all of this beauty. Beauty to enjoy for the next seven months.

I want to think that there is still possibility for me, I really do.
Even being here is only possible because you are not.

It can’t all have been for nothing.
But the lesson of your death is that sometimes there is no why. Sometimes it just is.

*Didn’t Open Only Moved

10 august 2025 746a

how many things can happen in a life before there are no good things left in possibility?
how many devastations do you endure before your own comes way too soon or way too late?
how wide is the ebb and flow and wax and wane and nadir and pinnacle?
no, I don’t want to live in fear.
it is only always one more thing that swings it
one more trick to topple.
the tiltawhirl is tiring, exhausting.
I am living in the good and kind and love and I want so much to stay.

I want to stay here.

The view from the porch where I currently live.

I think it’s the mornings that are hardest

I think it’s the mornings that are hardest
Yes, the mornings when there’s no one to send out this 💜 my heart
There’s no one to tell
I’m awake! I’m alive! I made it through another night!

It’s also all the times during the day I want to share my face with you, where I want to show you that I am thinking about you, because you could always tell.

It is all of the times that I think about you, your face, your smile, your very name makes me glitter and squish up like I am being devoured by you.

my eyes open, and before I can see anything, I see you.

Your goodness is so pervasive, it has wound around every part of my life, tangling, reaching, connecting all of the things, like mycelium.

To focus on the things that I would prefer, instead of the things I would not; put the energy there, please.

I have one of your overshirts, I’ve wrapped myself in it this lovely autumn morning in July. I haven’t washed it, I took it from the hook where you left it.
Hi love.
×××

bumblebee.

what I am thinking
as I lie here with my face in the sun
body twisted in pain on this too-narrow couch
tears rolling across my face, into my ear
what I am thinking in my grief as I read their poetry
what I am thinking is what I knew.

You are here to help me when you could not in life. How could I ever think I’d lose you?

You were there when I found him.
You were there in my face to say

“I have him now
I am here
I am here for you.”

Help me. Please.
I am open to your help.
Please.
Help me.
I am listening.

comfort.

Sitting in your chair, reading your newspaper, using your lighter, waiting for the wash
I can see you puttering around this place
even if nearly all of what we did here was talk and eat and love and sleep.
Delighting in the chairside lamp that with a touch(!)
turns on and warm and warmer
just as your touch turns on and warm and warmer
I can see your face peeking around the corner from the kitchen, looking at me with raised eyebrows and pursed lips.
The love on your face, the sheer delight is unending.
I can see you picking up each of these things, finding a stopping place in your book and putting a bookmark there.
All of these things that came before me and now no more discussion to be had.
So I will find you myself.
I have forever.