If you love something, let it go

I used to have dreams you came back.

.

You were weak and mechanical, and in so much pain,

the way you were at the end. You sat,

half-slumped, in your bed at the end

of a darkened hall, in a darkened room,

and my dream-self was horrified

at how thin you'd become, all caves

and hollows, bones shivering without meat.

You breathed haltingly.

You needed machines, almost, to live.

.

What does it say about you, that every night

in those terrible dreams you still managed to smile tiredly at me?

And what does it say about me,

that every night I wished you back into the grave?

.

Grief is complex, they say.

No. Grief is simple, primal- like a vein.

.

Kill me, you used to say, about the Alzheimer's

that claimed your father. Kill me if I ever get like that.

But it wasn't Alzheimer's

(you never got old enough for that.)

.

Cancer is the joker in the deck of life,

the slip-shod russian roulette cruelty of shaking the board

and seeing where the pieces land.

Cancer is silent and white,

like a waiting room that smells of antiseptic and blood

(Put more accurately, a cell.)

.

Ever since you've been gone, I've started to think

about lifespans. The time I have left must be equal or less

than the time you got, to be fair, though nothing is fair

(Per this equation, I have approximately sixteen years;

per justice, you should have had at least that many more.)

.

As time went by, the dreams kept coming,

but they were kinder, softer,

shadows edged with light.

In one of them, we walked

along our early-morning street, fog rising

from neighbors' grass, asphalt slicked with overnight rain-

you were walking ahead of me, almost in reach but not

quite, and then you turned, and then,

voice hanging in tendrils like the drops

of dew on the million blades of grass, bent quivering

in the rising sun, you said:

I want you to know-

I just want you to know

-how much I love you.

.

I woke to the slow morning murmur of your voice fading,

swore that I felt the ghost of your hand on my arm, waking me-

and that if I turned in enough time I'd be able

to watch you leave.

(that was the last night I dreamed of you for years.)

.

You still insist on coming back,

but this time it's in ways I can accept, could even cry

for the relief of: The sound of you in my own voice.

The shadow of your eyes in mine. Not simply hereditary,

but a nascent possession,

spurring me out of bed.

Taking my hand. Placing it on the wheel.

.

Saying to me, drive, for wherever you go

you take me with you.