absent muse blues

earlier this year
i was closer to death
than i’d ever been
aware of being
and the calm descended
because isn’t that what i came for
why else do you fly out
to stay with drunk strangers
who love guns
but the moment passed
and the adrenaline faded
into seven hours
on the side of a highway
with two cigarettes
and nothing to eat

i could say i am personally glad
but it probably would have been
painless
and easier for the ones around me
than most deaths
hell
half of them were bracing for it
what do you expect to happen
in the aforementioned
drunk/strangers/guns situation

still here we are wasting away
staring at our dirty nails
in faux silence
with not so much as a goodbye
standing between us
there is something
i want to say but cannot
there are so many things

instead:
the breadcrumbs we leave
in these digital parks
are crucial somehow
i knew he was gone
because i could see
which songs he was listening to
late at night pretending to be asleep

i’m telling you something
i’m telling you: i know
because the spine of this electric book
is creased, by you, i assume
and falls open to the pages
you apparently return to
again and again

because who else would think
to read that chapter more than once
because why else would this story
rank higher than the rest
you are not my best work
but o faithful
you return

or maybe i am presuming
or maybe it is the past
i guess i’ll know for sure
if the metrics change
but if you get this letter, tell me
does it come on at night
do you remember the path you took
and did the words come back to you
because i asked them to
as they did for me
from your silent memory