i never saw you do it

but i saw it when it was done 

pupils bulging in dark pools

lips fluttering 

you had so many things to say 

so many things to do 

your dealer put a gun 

to your head 

and you just laughed 

i wasn’t sure what

to say after that 

there is concern 

and then there is fear 

i never saw you put the needle in your arm 

or snort lines off the mirror 

i was always too square for that 

but i remember your fingers 

touching the edge of my face

as the ambulance came 

we all saw it coming

but it felt impossible to counteract 

a few years later 

i had to accept 

there was nothing else

i could say to you 

we were at a diner 

near Westside Highway 

for the first time 

in a long long time 

you looked different 

more meat on your jaw 

but like you’d lost weight 

all the same 

your skin shiny and rough 

at the same time 

we chatted over eggs 

and hash browns and ketchup 

you told me that you’d overdosed 

went to rehab 

i thought you were just like everyone else in New York 

busy, over your old friends, plotting to get on with something else 

who knows what happens 

to people when they disappear 

in those years, your hands took to the pipe 

and your body withered away 

nobody noticed except for the few 

who tried to save you and save you again 

clean now and ready for a new life

something totally different 

maybe real estate

or nutrition or something 

i must have said something dumb 

like, “that’s great.” 

when all i could think about was 

how close your life was to slipping away 

the next call i got, you were already gone 

your life moving forward and back 

at your funeral, all of us could do nothing 

but just tell you how great you were

while the fissures cracked inside all of us for not 

being at the right time or the right place 

who is ever taught anything of death 

you entered the void, swallowed whole head to toe 

all possible futures cleaved along with you 

your death meaning something different for each of us  

soon

you visited me in the horizon line between sleep and wakefulness

interlocked my finger with yours and whispered, “don’t be sad” 

my face awash with tears when I saw the sunlight

i cleaned my face and spoke to no one  

can God understand these tears 

as small as they may seem 

they are typhoons inside

who knew grief to be so obscene

as private as it is consuming 

you feel like you are speaking a language 

that no one understands 

even those who grieve the same spirit 

each need something different to come back into life

i went to the club that night to forget forget forget 

yet, there you were dancing in the corner 

bathed in red light 

shape of the angel 

moving 

with a different grace 

already called 

far from where we were