Dream Obits

When you ate chocolate cake.
When you taught me the dogma of tea.
When we were un-identical Doublemint Twins.
When you ate air.
When all the things you were were best.
When memory I don’t remember.
When dizzy surrounded you.
When I drank dizziness.
When we wore nothing but a Canadian flag.
When I learned gin. And tonic.
When we spoke French like we were.
When you believed in The City and I believed in everything.
When you were too much perfection.
When poetry in pieces filled holes and time.
When the sound of typing filled the room full, pushing everything else out windows and doors.
When you drove all night and we woke up in Virginia, 5 hours from class, right in the middle of life.
When we were the theatre – play, actors, audience.
When you were full of theory and Stanislavski, props and sets, lights and sound and fury.
When you were a Tennessee Williams belle.
When I though of you as whole, no shards distorted, no pieces broken.
When He came, and we stopped.
When a call broke the mirror, the world.
When the hospitals anesthetized emotion.
When numb. And dumb.
When screaming – lights, flesh, heart.
When silent sings, always.
When you were Langston Hughes’ genius child.
When you run wild.