Death tends to be so radical and precise, doesn’t she?

Like a cold pair of scissors suddenly severing the stalk of a freshly bloomed peony.

Then the helpless muscles in the arms hopelessly tensing never to reach again.

Never

Never that flesh, never that smell, never that look in the never that color of the never those eyes.

Again

Life is never like that ridiculously oversized ice-cream that they sell in that utterly uninteresting Swedish town –

You never get enough of it.

Death always comes like a summertime storm. You never expect it. And even as the thunders are rolling, you still can’t believe it’ll get you all wet to the bone and cold as ice. It’s summer.

Nevertheless…

We who are temporarily left

behind –

flooded by waves and waves of neversaid words, nevercast glances, nevergiven hugs, neverforgiven mistakes, nevergiven chances, neverlived dreams, neverdone work –

weep

not for those who have crossed,

but for our own murdered innocence.

We weep

for our own betrayals.

Where did kindness drown?

Stark naked in front of this cold mirror –

The shame.

Is this who i am?

I am

I

I want to go back!

Just one more second of kindness.

Just one more second.

One

Please let me go back.

A beggar kneeling by locked gates.

Time can be so…

What’s the word?

Cruel?

Oh, no, that’s actually me.

Time is just

A circle

PS I want to remember you as you were when our eyes first met. Do you remember? That surprise. That oh-my-god-I-know-you look? I want to remember you like that. So that I will recognize you again next time we meet. All of you.

It’s that season again

I smile to the woman who crosses the intersection in front of me, riding her bike, her long, wheaty hair mounting the wind. She notices me and, for a fraction of a second, we make eye contact as she smiles back and disappears into the noisy traffic flow as if swept away in a flash flood. Waiting for the light to turn green, my bike seat firmly squeezed between my thighs, one foot pushing against the curb of the sidewalk, I am thinking about death.