Non-commemoration

I toast you this year with cough syrup, because I don't have the energy for poetry or wine. Rush to get my remembrance in under the gun, because I can't let April expire without marking in the invisible ledger the wordless weight I have felt for weeks in this month you called its own eternity. I give up a poem, let the scraps melt in my head as my notebook lays inkless on the bed. I read your poems, an essay about you. But even that I only make it halfway through. I get caught on the photo, cropped to a square, without my name or the press's copyright anywhere. I think, Why does it matter? Why do I care whether this person I don't know attaches my record of knowing and being in a physical space with Craig to his? And I am certainly not important in this regard, but it is also like my own history being erased. You do not belong to me or to anyone. And my grief is no more valid than another's. And certainly if you belong to anyone, it is a cavern, a cliff who has claimed you. A thermal siren who adds your bones to her collection.

All month I felt the day creeping closer. And then my brain stopped holding the days. From April 22nd on, I was a day ahead, as if I could will it closer, hasten the anniversary and commemorate it...with what? My students kept saying to me, Miss A--, it's not April 24th yet. And every day, I would walk to the board and erase my impatience. A student died in a car wreck, and I'd think, And this... and mine... Someone says the student was kind of a jerk, but now that he's gone, everyone is making him out to be a saint. And I think part of that is youth, but a lot of it is human. This is what I know: you were often an ass. Charming, captivating, stimulating, yes. But selfish often and a frustrating friend and mentor. And yet, I could show you, here, how deep are the rifts left on me by the times we occupied the same space. The way you helped me hold on, before I knew how easy it was to let go. It is trite, and yet, it's what I have.

And what? Four years with no fanfare. Not like the first year when we toasted you with Jameson's in a dive bar in Denver. The day arrived. And I was not in tears like I had been in the days before. But I was still bereft. And am, lying here on my bed, typing these words into my laptop. The cat is asleep at the foot of the bed. The air smells like lemongrass. And it is not romantic, but the result of my eco attempt at killing an enormous cockroach that flew above my bed only minutes ago. Have you turned into something? Did your friends leave you, unable to recognize the thing you became? And what year will it be when I finally let you go? Until then, I continue to think of you too often. Whenever I see Orangina, paella and tiny squid. Sometimes when a bird, a shot glass.

"I am living a life now where I keep account of the doings of particular birds."

April is almost over. I have to leave you there.