Some are Dead and Some Are Living

after Coleen McElroy
for Ai Elo

Thanksgiving 2012 I lay in your bed and stroke the egg of your
cheek listen to you diagnose the wound your pronouncements
tired and weathered the lamp of your eyes dotting away in the
distance like you’d bit an alternate self and bled a color you’d
rather stare into for the rest of your life I wonder about the
quixotic nature of a forced ending I think about the inherent
tragedy of cliffhangers you tell me that you know exactly where
you are going and that it’s everywhere and nowhere at all

Somewhere in a different universe in a kitchen that I’ve
wallpapered with my own hands your fresh baked rainbow
cakes fall open at the slit and you laugh that laugh that you
laugh from the belly of your throat and in this fantasy you
never died because we never bothered you with the provincial
requirements of being alive and in this fantasy your joy I see it
in your alien grin your agelessness your maplessness that happy
crescendo in your sigh

I’m saying:

Life isn’t everyone’s final destination some of us are inherently
extra terrestrial by formulaic design the stars and their stuff
entirely inadequate in the face of such an impossible
occurrence some of us are meant to be visitors just subletting
bodies for the pleasure of it some of us are meant to stagger through
eternity like evangelists of time I’m selfish and I
should have heard you the first time:
please, Camonghne, just let
me stay, everything feels so fucking good up here.