The Answer

How do you put into words something like this?
How do you even formulate it into a thought?
How do you experience and live it?
How do you wake up every day and face that reality?

The answer is simple:
You just do.

You can cry a river and that won't bring him back.
You can indulge in pity and melancholy but that won't resurrect him.
Dave is gone;
somewhere out there in the void,
which might just contain heaven.

Dave is a butterfly frozen in time,
a hummingbird frozen in tar.

I look to my oldest brother and he tells me,
"Dave lives in our hearts,
that's the only way we can feel him.
Memories are only holograms."
But goddamn,
sometimes it seems like that's all I've got.

But I do feel him in the cool air of night;
in fact, it is just that: a chill.
A reminder that Dave existed in spacetime.

I try to keep him on my phone,
but find his image hard to look at.
So much beauty and manhood,
only to be cut steeply.

I go on, dragging these demons behind me,
anchored to them like Prometheus.
And I look at the supernova
that was his life--and then I smile.

Other than that, I just do
the only thing I can do:
Carry on.

2/15/11