i just really think i miss him, ok?

Listen, or don’t. There was this guy, i know, but not the same one i wrote about in that stupid song that flew away in the mourning doves before first light 2019. it was the person, the one at the cigarette dump disguised in a fortress of oregon brick & dumpster chique, this who let me take him to the guitar room to make music about an angel that turned out to be a chalk-eyed stone on a deadman’s doorstep. this was the man who went to the sea to defend the land and went under the knife to save the heart thrice or twice maybe. i didn’t know him because none of the stories ever got finished because of invaders or we thought we’d have more time later. i should have been wiser by that age, certainly he should have. wise for the cracked unlistening youth: there will not be more time later. there is never more time at all; if there is a later you’re lucky and possibly also dead. at the time i probably wasn’t in love with him but now i feel as though my ghost is falling in love with a shadow a shadow projected onto a backwards mirror & you know anytime i hear heavy metal i think of how he is so strong in so many ways yet can take these war-knowing hands, can use them to wrap around a kitten, fluffy as the tip of a dandelion tuft looking for homeroom, or even those arms strong as a crocodile moat that can wrap around a small person who feels too big for the world & make the world seem less too & make the person feel less small & yet smaller all at once. those arms when they were around me for a tiny space in time it felt safe, like i was. so that’s what the ghost in my shadow’s heart is mirror-tugging after. its looking for that man-boy-brother-son-solder-dandelion-holder who would have stayed, who would have written or called at least in the air, & for all i know you did or maybe even quit, for you me or for her who is really the one i want you to hold because you can, & right now, that’s what needs. but if there was a magical dream world where you didn’t forget & didn’t hold it against me that i got left away first & in that dream world i’d be waiting, the dream you could come find me & maybe again but this time i’d be the world to saften you instead and right.