December 3, 2015When They Told Me You Had Died
When they told me you had died,
I figured you hadn’t.
Their call did not wake me.
It was a dream,
or a cruel joke,
an unfortunate confusion of facts,
they’d misspoken,
or I hadn’t heard them right.
Because people don’t just die,
not in their thirties,
not the people I know.
People I know are the first to call on every birthday.
Their houses teem with fish tanks.
They drink too much at the bar
and flick their cigarettes at my chest.
No one sends the police
when they’ve been missing for days.
They’re not found in their beds.
Not people I know.
I was at a hotel in Boston.
With a cold that had
revealed itself slowly on my flight
the night before.
And after my telephone
relentlessly
buzzed me from my slumber,
after I’d hung up,
baffled that someone had
gotten this information so wrong,
I lay under a comforter that
who knows when last they washed it?
They always warn you.
They do the sheets,
but never the blankets.
There are bedbugs, you know.
They always warn you.
I thought about calling
to say I was in Boston,
you should be too,
and someone just told me the
craziest story.
But I knew if I dialed
you wouldn’t answer.
You always answered,
but you wouldn’t this time,
and it would be true.
from #49 - Fall 2015