A cup drips air,
peanuts fester.
—John Ashbery
and a difficult one at that. but one to the
end, i can say, which felt like abandonment
moreso than a passing, as these things often
must surely seem. but this being the first of
such of its kind, perhaps even the last, which
was brought about by the literal end of a life,
how am i to blather on with any authority about
that solemn notion; all of the rest of mine
have come to terminations much less mortally
and more metaphorically. either way such an
ending is physical, visceral. but when i heard
of his passing, all i could think was how he’d
been the one friendship to which i had found it
once necessary to finalize. and yet, fortune of
fortunes, until the sad day of his demise, he in
stead remained cordial, empathetic, understanding,
and with that familiarity that comes from the
hundreds of hours one puts into these things
we call the real deal. even as all of the others
disappeared in the wake of a path of some del
usion, of some destruction, as far as i still know
(don’t ask me to do any further research, however),
they’re all still out there, cold hearts bumping away
at someplace out of my periphery, which, sure, is
another way to be dead. but this one, who is
gone for real, not just dead to me or dead spec
ifically for me, is actually gone. and i miss him.
and that familiarity. and take comfort in the
hard fact that i could never simply slip into an
abject avoidance of his existence, even after
our unfortunate but necessary ‘falling out.’ it
remains one of life’s greatest mysteries, to me,
how anyone could even, would even, find that both
feasible and possible. friendship as a capitalistic in
vestment, perhaps? a metaphor, really, but a real
way to see it. more as that which sustains. have
mercy on those who see humanity as anything else.
and on those of us who see it as so big, these bonds
so irrevocable. but more than anything, a deep
gratitude for this friend, and of his rare choice of a
palpable if not yet a mostly performative permanence
against the definitive transience of life, this existence,
which, in reality, of course, sure, is nothing less
than—and nothing more than—ephemeral.
