it is too late, and too weak,

and you never would have wanted it anyway.

time has taken your living presence and diluted it

so that everywhere holds your ghost;

bus stops, the flower shop,

a summer day on Fortwilliam Park,

but only my loneliness brings you life.

i dream of you for the first time in six years

during a global pandemic.

rationally, i know that is only media-induced anxiety

reminding me that i know how to lose and survive it.

if i try hard enough i can hear your voice use those words,

but that’s the point. there is a try involved.

i like to think on good days that you didn’t know,

that you still don’t,

that somewhere you are still

trying to finish the party.

on worse days the thought of where you might be

is what makes me ill.

i can’t imagine you here.

i can’t imagine if we’d still be who we were,

but in dreams nothing has changed,

and you are what i hope to remember:

in full colour, warm, not yet beatified,

full of love, and full of love.