We had gone out for drinks to celebrate J.’s birthday
the day he finally came back. He had a habit
of disappearing, his body turning into a dense fog
before metamorphosing into tiny crystals of ice
where he used to be. Sometimes he would send a postcard
from an unknown country, a picture of him floating
on the surface of a dark lagoon, the bioluminescence glowing underneath
the pale expanse of his back.
He sent me a message from outer space once,
his voice muffled and cut
by fuzzy static, a sharp hiss, and I imagined him floating
in nothing but his skin, blinded by the sparkle of the stars
stippled against the cosmos, tethered to nothing.
Even with all of our friends, as I looked at him, his gangling limbs
sprawled out limp next to me as though they no longer belonged to him,
his silver ring cool against the bone jutting out of my wrist,
I wanted to tell him about the letters I wrote,
how I folded them into swans with unsteady fingers
and sent them down the river to him,
ask if he ever read them, but I could never say the words.
On the walk back home,
J. was holding a yellow balloon that a friend gave him,
and I saw it sway in the wind on its thin string, felt it ghost
against my skull before slipping out of his hand.
I have spent lifetimes watching
you become missing from me.
Prayed to a God who does not answer.
But for now, you are still with me,
gazing in awe at the shrinking speck in the
night
sky,
our one small moment
drifting away,
already gone.
