To James Nimmons

I need to say something, because I know you are still out there, humming and walking dusty roads and thinking about girls with horn-rimmed glasses and cat-ear hats. I know that you still think about me, as I think about you, as your body plunges into a sad state of thirty-hood… all the countries you planned to see, the careers you intended to conquer, the spacious consciousness you anticipated on inhabiting—all those far and deep and wide things, all mashed down now, narrow and slitty like your mother’s suspicious eyes. Well! Suddenly we find ourselves spiraling away to the farthest reaches of our respective private universes… and isn’t that what we always loved about each other—that we had “respective private universes” to spiral away to, and we built them well. Ha, kindred spirits is what we were… maybe what we still are. But I don’t know anymore. Doesn’t it suck sour frog butts that I don’t know anymore. But what it is that I wanted to say is that it was you, you, that shone in my darkest darkenesses, dim lightening-bug of a light though you were. You don’t scoff at a light when it’s your only light. Thank you, thank you thank you, for all those moments when you were my only light.

And the succession of dreams came crashing forth like so many forgotten supermarket children—clamoring and shrieking for a creamy lick of love. And the outpouring of grief and joy intermingled sent shocks down spines and through brains, like a mouthful of candies with sour centers, like too many mouthfuls of blue slurpee burning down too many eager throats. And we gave. And we gave. And we gave until all of our glass hearts shattered, shards floating sweetly about us, like halos, like clouds, like sugar and salt.