DEATH

I think of all the questions I should have asked you,
questions that inevitably come to me only now,
now that you are dead—only now that you no longer exist
do I know what it means for you to have ceased to be. So often I tried to imagine this.
No matter how tightly I pressed my eyelids shut,
trying to push away the is, to conjure around me
the reality of your absence—I never seemed to succeed.
I never felt what it was like for you not to be. Now that you are not, I know exactly how that feels. And no matter how hard I squeeze my eyes shut now,
I can no longer remember what it was like not to know this.

What I want to say is that I miss you with every cigarette I smoke. That’s why I’ve stopped smoking, you know? Hoping I wouldn’t miss you so much then…