Cause of death, suicide. But I will not be told if you died of a drug overdose or if you intentionally hurt yourself. How long did you know that you would die on December 5? If intentional, you probably knew for a while. If accidental, did you know as it happened? Did you think: I shouldn’t have done this? How much I will miss. How much I will be missed. I have too much to live for. The details, the weights and measurements, the conclusion, will be shared with your family. Emotion-less words delivered in a monotone with the obligatory sorry for your loss. We for-good broke up two days after our date on Newbury Street. Sorry for your loss. You told me that you knew you were going to marry me and raise children with me and that we would and could get there and that you and my wife would learn to get along because we’d all be raising a family together and everything you said I had wanted you to say. We were going to be OK. But when I asked if we were going to see each other that night, you told me you wanted to get high with your friends and play Wii. And I told you that I deserved better and could get better and would get better. You texted me a picture of the restraining order, and told me you’d use it if I ever contacted you again. Six weeks later, you and I met in a courtroom and the restraining order was dismissed. In a courtroom is where I last saw you. Outside that same courtroom, nine months earlier, is where you confessed to being a crystal meth addict. Poetry, the start and end, but poetry only in hindsight. Icarusdescending. Even then, I wanted to catch you. But you were already gone. Or on your way to going. Your mother would die six weeks after the restraining order was dismissed. And you would die 13 months later. Your body given back/made available to your family, which had already decided to cremate you. You never wanted to go into the ground. You didn’t want a place for people to go to remember you. “I’ll want to remember you,” I told you, the night you told me that when you died, no one would want to remember you. “I’ll always remember you, and you’ll always remember me, and we’ll always be the way we are right now.” You probably called me rabbit, and you probably kissed me, and you probably said the things you are supposed to say when someone says that they will remember you for always, and I believed the things you said after I said that I would remember you for always.
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Henderson