In Memory

People ask me if I miss you
How can they know
what it felt like
to watch your towheaded brilliance
bobbing in the sun splattered pool
during our first summer together.
You were always
much too hard on me
You would have said
No
it was the other way around
I don’t care who is right
anymore
Remembering
the play of moonlight
on your sleeping features
You breathed
so loudly that I wondered
how you stayed asleep
I spent so many nights enthralled
by your breathing
until the dancing lights
appeared on our bedroom wall
projected by the policemen
who woke us up
at 2 a.m.
He’s your son they said
You have to let him in
We never let him out we said
and only you laughed.
The path from my heart to yours
was never very clear
and no amount of external wattage
could ever make it visible
to someone who didn’t know
what to look for.
All children grow and change
and move down the path
that separates them
from their parents
propelled by anger or hormones
or whatever it is that
turns them into the adults
that they’ll become
I waited for you
to turn around
and walk back to me
You never did.
I wish I’d known you when you were younger
We would have built that path
together placing flagstones
side by side.
As it was you got lost along its curves
Over and over
And the last time it happened
you did not call out for me
and I did not go looking for you.
Is it better this way?
I’ve lost the heartache,
the resentment,
the neon memory of
your selfish anger
When you left
you took my dreams of the future
and left me with nothing to talk about
when mothers gather.
Did I put too much on you?
So many dreams
of what could never be
were sewn to your shadow.
I wanted you to make me
like everyone else
even though I knew
it was not in your power
to do so
Should I apologize for that?
Your laughter still rings in my ears
as you sang on stage with your friends
in that video
from first grade
and as you lied to the cops
in the claustrophobic corner
of that unrepentant room
where you denied what you’d become
and as you told me
for the umpteenth time
to go to hell.
You took all that was good in me
and made me regret
that I’d ever shared
any of it with you.
All I have left is the knowledge
that nothing I do will ever
shine a light upon the path
that will bring you home again.
And so I do not miss you.
You left me nothing to miss.