everywhere i go

19

i thought that if i made friends with the plants, i would never be lonely but...

now all my friends are dying....

now i just have dead friends.

i've never had a friend who died before,

i've never had a friend die.... and

it's making me miss you.

this november is making me sick, it's making me think of last november when

it felt like you were dead, and i wanted to die....

and that december i walked on the beach and cried, i

have this bottle of turpentine that stays cold all the time

and when the days turned short and shortest, i

walked on the beach and thought about the time, i....

it felt like you were dead, like you were someone i

could talk to in my head

the sea is wide but it doesn't feel so large from land

bathtub salty stained with sand i

didn't know it then but the big brown gull that followed me was looking for someone . . . .

i miss you like the sun fills the sea in the dawn

i miss you like when a cake goes wrong

the way nuns wait out advent, that

that's the way i miss you. the way they wait on easter

through the lent-time 

i miss you like a fish out of water misses water

i miss you like a childless mother misses her daughter i-

oh, i know plants die and

come out alive on the other side in the springtime i 

know they resurrect like jesus after lent i

know they aren't over yet 

and yet

i miss them all the time, in every spot where they've disappeared

silty stink of soil, i

miss them like pain misses poison, i

come home exit wounded like

something stalked and shot

because when i walk home no matter which way i go i see

dead friends and dying friends to the left and right of me