In my nightmare I sit forever, nursing a glass of bourbon that never becomes warm or lowers its level, staring into the hard oak table, unable to die.

If there was a turning point in my life, it was that night.

It was one of my favorite memories, when I had favorites, when the past to me was a prophesy to the future and not the life of some fictional character, living in another world far from here. As the candlelight flickered off your eyelids, I spent that long lingering look upon your face marveling at it as one might wonder at the radiance of the sun. I've described the night with so many words now that it has become completely devoid of emotion. This is the tragedy of time, that descriptions of scenes as monumental as these can never carry with them the tumble of the heart, the stutter of the mind. But it is not upon that gaze that I wish to expound; doing so has done little to reveal the actual intention of that evening, or the actual consequence of it.

I could sense, even as I drowned in my own chemical ecstasy, that I was never going to feel that way again. I was at the peak of a curve, or perhaps as fate would find me, the trough. I was turning; the acceleration had finally reduced my velocity to zero, and I sat for one brief intentional moment in your presence, in that room, and I felt the world stop. I lied to you in that moment, brushing the hair back from your face and pretending that we could remain in that pause forever.

But it was a turning point, and we both knew it as we extinguished the candles one by one. My whole life before that night was spent dreaming of just one moment of tranquility, of knowing what true love meant.

And my whole life after that night was spent running from it.

I can't explain how strange it is to see your face, to hear your voice. You died nine years ago, maybe ten now. How then do I feel this flood of emotion when you laugh, when you swear off the cuff in videos I was never meant to see? How can I explain the way your quirky tongue turning a phrase in a flat, two-dimensional mirage fills me with inexplicable desire to reach into the screen, grab ahold of your locks of hair, pretend that you really are alive and that all of these breaths you're taking are real; that all of the syllables you form with your precious, perfect lips are not simply voyeuristic fantasies of your afterlife -- or mine?

I'm forming my thoughts carefully, dreaming that I might get one more chance to talk to you, to tell you everything you (could have?) meant to me, but it's a fantasy I'll never realize. It's just enough to make my heart sink every time I pick up the pen and try to write about the intimacy we never shared, shouldn't have shared, needed to share; how I try to tell you the future I saw apart from you in your eyes; how I try to ask for your forgiveness for being nothing by trying to be everything to you. As I watched the photons dancing before my eyes, all I could think was how foolish I was to ever believe that this terrible pen could produce the eulogy to do justice to your memory.

this messy house and restless sleep
and hours of staring at tiny bright pixels
flickering and wavering after a while,
this tired sore knee and aching foot
and a combination lock at the gym
growing a thin, stale layer of dust,
this foggy head and tired eyes
and longing looks at a soft black case
that's opened far too rarely,
this dying car and long dead iPod
and all of this entropy collecting
on everything I own and am,

every day a little bit more like a drop in a bowl,
this blood thins and this skin dries
and I ponder with my hands on the keyboard
the next words I will write
and how they could possibly make
all of this
go away

The past is as real to me as the present is, as I sit and read the nine-year-old words you wrote. I wanted to hate you after reading them, but I was the one who was aloof, distant. Your heart was in the right place, even if you were never able to act the part. When you sat, reading my story by the light of your candles and in front of a recording of David Bowie, did you imagine that you and I were the characters? You must have, and you must have known how deeply I was changed that night when I brushed your hair softly with my finger and watched you sleep. I imagined all these years that I felt what I felt alone, but maybe I didn't.

I thought I had discarded the emails your ex-boyfriend had written me, long after he was your boyfriend. He signed his emails "agape" even when I lashed against him in my proto-agnostic rage, and I resented myself when he died for never taking him up on his offer of coffee. It wasn't necessary; when we sailed on that boat on the Ohio River, we talked and sang enough for our entire lives. I can imagine him living in Missouri right now, preaching in a tiny church in a needy town. How could I really feel his death? Ten years on, I knew we'd have never said another word anyway. His death was immediate, when he boarded his bus and I boarded mine as we poured out of the convention hall that cold February afternoon. Everything I heard from him after that was from beyond the grave.

You asked how he and I had "clicked." It surprised you, shocked you to know that we had something to talk about. Who had we each become to you? I glaze over, reading emails that were written from your heart but clearly not to me. Who were you writing to? Were you writing to Daniel? It's my address in the "To:" line, but you never told me you loved me and here were words so sweet, words that ended with a declaration of love. Did you expect somehow you'd get us both?

I know where you live now. I'm embarrassed to admit that, but Daniel told me. He wants to take a train and he wants to find you. I keep telling him you're dead but he won't listen. He insists I send you a postcard, at least. Just one, he says, from Baltimore. How am I supposed to explain to him that he's reading the past, that you're not alive anymore? How can I convince him that when he reads, "i like getting mail and i think my favorite type of mail is postcards and i think my favorite person to receive postcards from is you," that he's reading what was, not what is?

How can I ever convince him that even if he sent you a thousand postcards, you'd never respond?

I stared at apparent brokenness in the 4" thick green trim that lined my room as you sat on my bed, listening to my rumbling voice. The wall juts in not two meters from where I sat at the desk, and my two-dimensional perspective forced an awkward disconnectedness in the border. It bothered me as I rambled on, talking just to keep you in my room. How could this brokenness ever be resolved?
( ... )

How am I supposed to tell you anything? I fell into the grass yesterday and watched the sky through maple leaves; would it be inappropriate to call that the high point?

I do what I'm expected to do, but more and more I just want to sleep.

I do not take credit for this; it is merely a retelling of a very old story. For example, see this version .

A woman sat by the bedside of her husband, who lay dying. He was a jealous man, who had always loved his wife like no other man had, and who always believed no other man was capable of such love. As his heart slowed and his breathing became erratic, he took her hand. "Please promise me, my dear woman, that you will never love another man. For I know the hearts of men, and none will ever love you as I have, and you will only ever be hurt."

The woman promised, tearfully, as he slipped from this world.

For many months, the woman kept her promise, until one day she met a charming man. This new man treated her kindly and adored her, and she slowly began falling in love with him. However, when she prepared for sleep at night, she would be visited by the ghostly visage of her husband, coming back to remind her that this man was just going to hurt her, that he was incapable of loving her as she deserved.

For many weeks this continued. The ghost was a strange and clever one, for he was capable of extracting minutia from her day's conversations and using those points against her. He was also able to describe in detail precisely the gifts the woman and new man exchanged or the embraces they shared.

Soon, the woman was at the brink of insanity thanks to the ghost. She loved this new man, but she was unable to move beyond this horrible visitor at night. Seeking advice, she asked a holy woman what she could do. "Simply take a handful of rice," she said, "and offer it to him."

That night, the ghost appeared again. And, just as before, he began telling her of that day's events - including the visit to the holy woman. "So you know," the woman began, "I must offer you this rice."

"I don't see how this matters," the ghost replied.

"I will promise to leave this man, to remain single the rest of my life, dressed in black and worshiping your memory, if you will only answer me one question."

Being a wise but selfish ghost, it was more than willing. "Ask me, dear wife."

"How many grains of rice are in my hand?"

At these words, the ghost vanished and was never heard from again.

The two-year-old heron slipped gracefully from its perch a hundred feet above the shore. Its family had been living here on this cliff for longer than anyone in the flock could remember; this generation was slightly stronger, but no wiser, than the previous one; this was simply the way it was: no wisdom was passed along, but better genes always were.
( ... )

I returned from Pittsburgh with a book.
When I was 17 and tried to write poems
they came out reeking of immaturity,
but not for lack of trying.
The red book from my freshman year,
from the class I hated, was hiding
in the bottom of a tub of similarly discarded textbooks.
But this one
surfaced.
It's not a textbook, I tell myself,
but a text. I sat nights reading it, not understanding
what sex had to do with petty things,
what a crow had to do with memories. I read it
over and over and tried to copy the style -
the empty flattery of mockery.
It was easy, I concluded, to write poems like he did:
just make a few clever statements,
wrapped in a clever innocuous story. Oh
and don't forget the larger, magnanimous words
that seem to tower above all of the others,
drawing the reader to them like flames.
I never figured out when to start a sentence
in the middle of a line. It seemed random,
like the cut of a fabric or the length of thread.
I hated the class because poetry seemed so trite;
so banal and ridiculous. Something anyone could do
and look back, laughing, at the fools trying to analyze it.
Yet burning hot embarrassment tore through me
as I read about my teenage pain, thinking how my teacher
said there's nothing wrong with therapy but don't ever
compare therapy to poetry. And I traced the lines cut in
awkward places; the flow of words that never made any sense
beyond the present context. I felt those threads I wove
float into my future, land softly as elephants.
You see, I never learned to write poetry like Dunn or, what's worse,
like I always believed I could.
I wanted to keep that secret for myself,
not share that minor intimacy with anyone.
But, see, the teenage boy in me refuses to budge,
still believes he knows the Truth.

“Do you think he’s ready for this?”

As the plane swooped and dove unmajestically above Indianapolis, I sat, looking across the aisle and the other three seats at the ground enveloping the entire opposite window. In between pitches and jerks were long periods of smooth drifting as the circles became lower and the approach final. In my landing, I experienced a vague memory of the last time I had flown into this airport, more than ten years ago.

( ... )

The thin progression of time doesn't bother me much; it seems slow enough to allow me my selfish wallowing on endings and rapid enough to prevent boredom. And while there's the fear that it's accelerating, that I will find it harder to hang on as the ride goes forth, what's worst is found in my abstractions of the past. Pain becomes a knowledge of pain, love a knowledge of love, and one day soon the tears I saw welling in your eyes that you forced yourself to restrain will become nothing more than a memory of a heart-tug; the swelling and overflowing won't be there even as I desperately try to make myself remember.

I'll be able to talk about it: recall the periphery of the words, the clothes we wore, the clever body language. But the time is rapidly approaching (and far too soon) when I will think back to that moment and be unable to see your face or feel your pain.

I know what you'd say - it's precisely what I should allow. The joy flies and we kiss it; let it rejoin the river. You will drink from it again, soon.