April 1st/middle of the night

I miss you like a metronome. And can't stop and won't stop. The weight of a thousand clothes pins- perhaps if I...? Well? I want to feel something don't I? Seismic intervention. Concavity of the soul-deep, such yawning of loss, the dry eyed blink. Weight of 515 empty calendar squares, too many days-this day. Some days I recycle, count days, retread thoughts. Wonder what if, as if, if only- miasmic, misanthropic time, some Moliere farce gone very very wrong. The king has sold all his clothes or donated them for some worthy cause in Buelahland, where everything and nothing happens, not heaven, not hell- no in between, purgatorial nothing, just nothing- where I imagine you might be. What if, as if, if any of that mattered. Except this; that I should wear you like a tee shirt. This night, recycled- turns to nights made indulgent by self pity and wondering. Sometimes I wonder if you can find me here. The day you die, three things happen. I see butterflies, everywhere-orange, in gutters and street lights and police station waiting areas. I see butterflies in the coroner's office while I wait to identify your brackish water, swollen body- butterflies, 3 pm, between the coffee machine and the pay phones. Proving that everything is virtual and everything virtual, actual- in the file where I have kept every message you ever wrote, for twenty years; two brand new messages appear- one after the other at 4am, 23 hours after you jumped. I cannot bring myself to open them. They glare at me daily, in bold. I talk to your parents 29 times on the telephone. 58 times, I say- "cremation, Kumasi, I'll take him." I'll take him... 4 days later, you end up with your parents idea of a Christmas and Easter, Catholic open casket fiasco where a jaded ex lover, who was not, claims to be your wife.