Zeus himself could have lived inside that beard

the whorls of aged white like an entire sky

electric strands straining out from a face

that used to be handsome

or so the woman behind the desk

who is quick to call any man handsome

once told me

‎after she’d seen a picture from your

(curling at the corners, becoming indefinite)

running years

or your Navy years

or some other years

before this year

of kittens and pornography

not sleeping through the night

skipped medication

self-medication

sitting alone in the dark, the early morning

out in the county where there is hardly a sound at all

at 3:00am

you didn’t sleep for days

on the long trip north to see your mother

to dance with her in the living room

and to bicker with your remaining brother

about the mess that she made

when she ate

because, in moments, you knew

what matters

‎getting on the bus and leaving the kittens behind

because you wanted to tell your mother goodbye

back when you thought that she was the one

who was going to die

I’m almost certain

that nobody told you they were sorry

to hear that you’d come home to find them 

all gone, gathered up

nameless now though you had named them

I know that I didn’t tell you I was sorry 

to hear that they were gone

those kittens you’d brought into town

in a box

to show the people who were your friends

the small, furred lives that shared your life

and I know that I spoke with a man 

whose beard is much less fine than yours was

(a beard sparse and trimmed, with no room for the twisting of old gods)

about how it was probably good

that the kittens were gone when you got home

‎back to that place on the ridge

with the mud thick like a moat in the springtime

sitting above the fields and the roofs of little rectangles  

fiberglass and aluminum

air conditioners hanging off of them 

like loosened teeth

and the windows covered up 

to hide what was missing 

and what was messy

places just like that place

where you died unattended

on a weekend

Your eyes must have blinked like they did

on the most unremarkable Tuesdays

slow at the edge of a deep, deep sleep

Were you curled like a weary child

with no food in the cubboard

save for beans and rice

beans and rice?

The nights getting cold and the tomatoes turning

into pesticide pulp

all the bins had held on the last day 

were potatoes, mealy and sprouting eyes 

(forgotten, unwanted things)

still dusted with the earth of this place

where you found yourself

after so many other places

I told them, you know,

these people that will probably forget you

that will only remember you sometimes

when they are counting the sadnesses 

that come with their work

that we’d crossed paths before

in that winter of ’77, when I was just a baby toddler girl

with scared brown eyes

in a strange place with my parents

who would sneak out to old van

 parked up by the road

to search for twinkies in the glove compartment

some sweetness from the world away

from the mountains in Tennessee 

in the middle of the winter

maybe you talked to my father

or thought my mother was beautiful

the way any young man

trying to find some light might

for a second, it seemed like they understood

and then I remembered that they couldn’t

possibly

understand

On some day in the office

that used to be my office

I thought for sure ‎that the gold flecks in your eyes 

surely meant something

like stardust

as you spoke about forces and light and dark

the war unseen but surely real

in the way you cried for your lost brother

and the deal you thought you’d made

in spite of the fact

that no matter how many times I told you

You never would believe

that you hadn’t sold his soul 

to some man that you would not name

some man that you refused to name

because, you explained, if you told me his name

I would know it 

and then it would know me 

and I never did say thank you 

for sparing me from that fear that you lived with

Do you remember the way I’d make circles

in the stones out front

when we talked about life and death

and the way we’d hold our arms up toward the sky 

making circles with our limbs 

and the breathing in the dark 

both waiting alone and together

for the moment when we could forget 

everything that we ever thought we knew about ourselves

and our names and the places we had been 

and not been?

Do you remember what you wished for? 

I do. 

Now, when I see the sun setting earlier and earlier

another winter coming

in the wind and in the rain

and in the first light of every day

trying to turn to gold

the way it does

‎I imagine that you know

what is in my heart and in my mind

(I hope that you know, somehow.)

that I wish for you everything

that you didn’t have

and that I pray 

to the only thing I know how to pray to anymore

that you will

begin again

and begin again

and begin again.