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

twenty-nine days.

I woke up in your bed this morning, a Thursday
four weeks after I was supposed to.
how has it been 4 weeks already.

It’s like you’re just away somewhere
just out of reach, but not really
I can feel you here, everywhere here

I know you know
I know you are here
I can feel you enveloping me, keeping me safe.
I can hear you say,
“look at you!” your voice sparkling as much as your eyes

your presence is as thick as your mustache.

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.

the rest of forever

This figuring out of things this
Figuring out of how things came to be
Things came to be me how I
Became.

It is overwhelming in every single way in all
three hundred sixty degrees.

It is inwardly and outwardly and upwardly and completely bowling me over and tearing me apart

no it is never too late to learn I just wish you were around so I could show you what I’ve learned who I am who I have become.

Who I am still becoming.

I am sitting in my car and I am smoking and I am shaking and I am full of fear and full of love and they are the same thing.

They have always been the same thing.

As I am parsing all of these things as I am
As I am.
As I am uncovering all of these separate very distinct very discrete things
As I am peeling back the layers and understanding implicitly very explicit differences in things
I am filled with patience and sadness at all the time lost in between then and now.

Knowing that I have the rest of forever to be well.

Having promised you the rest of forever to heal.

I had the rest of your forever.
and you have mine.

741a 3d february 2022

I am feeling crazy this morning.

that in itself isn’t so unusual but this is just

This is so much on top of so much on top of so much please.

I don’t want this I don’t want this it doesn’t help to say I don’t want this until I say it I don’t want this I don’t like this I don’t want this none of it thank you please stop

stop.

1142p 11th december 2021

this late at night
at this time of year
there are some very dark stretches of route nine heading north to home
so dark that i could turn off my headlights

and disappear

there are very few other cars
no lights
i could drift into nothingness
brightness

then black.
Nothing.

the road ahead opens its maw
promising to swallow me whole.
it could be done.
Over.

this void within my chest swells
my brain reels

this is a thing I know, now, filed away.

letters from the past. 9th february 2018

dear j.

sorry I missed your call yesterday; Penny was here, helping me get Gary’s computer sorted (well, preliminary steps, anyway; she’s got more research to do) to get it connected back to the server. The one password he didn’t store in LastPass is the root password, because obviously that, his phone password, and his LastPass password were the only ones he needed to remember to unlock everything. She’ll be able to get sudo access though, and from there, be able to reset the server. She was able to open a terminal though (zshell) and it was a beautiful thing watching his code populate the screen once again. I happen to know that his code is streamlined and super-concise; no obfuscation, no mess, but it was heartwarming to get confirmation of that from another Linux user.

I gave her three of his most favored coding books; Beautiful Data, Beautiful Code, and I can’t remember the last but she was like “are you sure? These are really expensive”. Yes, I’m sure. They’re in good, useful hands now.

thanks giving. 747a 27th november 2021

i am thankful. greatly grateful.
hugely.
for my family, with whom i did not spend the day, but who understands,
or at least is willing to take my word for it that it would only harm me to be there.
i am grateful for my friends, my lovers, my loves.
the people with whom i did spend time, both physical and emotional.
trying to be as out of my head as i could stretch
while still remaining tethered, albeit tenuously.
knowing that this feeling as all feeling always does
will pass
and that there is indeed if not light
then a less-dark path.

what do i do now 854a 17 october 2021

my voice, transcript below

I have so much to say to you so much that, um, I just
i keep thinking that

I keep wanting to

I just
I just want to share with you. I just wanna tell you I just want you to see me now. I want i really

and I don’t think you would blame me for where I am. I don’t think anymore that you would blame me for where I am. Because I

depended on you so much

i depended on you so much and
it just took everything away.

you’re
gone.

and everything you did stopped with you.

There’s no one here. To see me doing fuck all.

There’s, there’s no one.

No one to report to.

There’s no one here.

There’s Mojo. He was real happy that
I went to bed at 9:30 and fed him first and got into bed and he came right in with me. And we snuggled all night, got up around six or something for his medicine. And then went back to bed.
Had like 10 hours of sleep sort of

what the fuck am I supposed to do now? what do I do now?

I mean, if I thought there was no way before and then there was but now it’s like everything is used up. I,
i
If I spend the money I have on the car, I will have nothing else.
nothing.
I don’t, I don’t, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.

Shower, head north. Make more stuff I guess.

water washes away

sitting in my car, rain smashing into the windshield
coming hugely into the narrow slit I’ve opened in the window
smoke hazing around the inside of the cabin

It is pouring (again)

giant crocodile tears wetting my sweater
I don’t dare lower the window any further not even to tap my ash
thunder competing with the din of the rain on my roof

I have eaten and smoked and am grateful for the help I had in making it through this day.
I am not alone.