I have this secret,

And maybe it is a culmination of a third of a life but

They say "I am so sorry" "I am so sorry" "I am so sorry"

And I say, 

This was a good man and good men don't die.

But he is is still somewhere probably and maybe alternative universes aren't just full of comets and universes that don't really end

Is this what you wanted me to say? All the hours in a warm room and all the time walking up to strangers in the cold,

All the knocks on doors fighting for life and living and life

All the drawings of bridges on little pieces of paper, explaining in six minutes all the secrets of Something More?

Is this what you wanted in my heart and engraved in my brain, deep grooves and firing connections, twisted and formed in the recesses of my mind?

Because, they say, "We are so sorry" and I watch all the sobbing people, with this secret

He is not gone.

Wishing that I could sit with the thing that bubbles
Majesty, or,
The simple kindness that stepping aside in the Street when someone is walking with stride and purpose, and maybe they see that if they stop you in your tracks, there will be no way to continue any kind of trajectory that you had set.

You will be off your game,
You will not be able to get back on the path you've set for yourself so maybe the greatest of kindnesses is just to let me keep going

Say that you didn't see it, when the whole world was burning and you
Organized your tiles in a row to spell a word that probably wasn't in the dictionary
And she says say the word, and I am there.

I don't know what that word is I think, and start thinking of my feet in my shoes and the way the bed presses against my body. My back. My hips.

She wouldn't grab a book, or a painting-- when the house is on fire.
Something to keep her body warm, or photo of someone she loved.

Just the shoes to walk away.

Are you okay, I say.
Your shirt is soft, but too big.
It's the day after my favorite person's funeral,
And I am floating above me watching myself kiss the urn that my uncle carved from a tree in the backyard.
The house that she grew up in, and
That you grew up in.

Grandpas die every day.
Dads don't have to die, I tell him.

I chase him down the hall.
The hotel isn't all that welcoming and
He is skinny.
Fumbling, hiding the brown bag in his jacket,
"I am okay."
And I don't believe him.