you’re dead today

you’re dead today and

i know i should at least make an effort

to force reluctant teardrops to dampen my face

and give a convincingly spluttering sob

if not for you then to show properly respectable grief

truthfully my eyes have prickled and tingled

every moment since you left

but i keep them dry and empty because

i’m afraid if i started i would never be able to stop

III

you’re dead today and

i’m overflowing with softly seething fury and despair

blurred into fuzzy aching emptiness

before you did this to me i’d begun to relax into

maybe some day near happiness

but now i’m so numb i almost wish

you could die all over again because

it might shock the life back into me

and there’s no one to blame but you

III

you’re dead today and

life has never seemed so fleeting and fragile

proven by the dusty death colored ashes you have become

yet still i think your death could be imagined

and you might reappear oblivious

to the tragic noiseless chaos that is life without you

as we whirlpool around the emptiness you used to fill

i’d eagerly trade this sickly enlightening perspective for

you solid touchable alive

III

you’re dead today and

without meaning to i’ve pictured you in all cliched afterlife forms

i see you with zombie arms and an empty gaze or

delicate toes peeking out beneath your pure angel’s gown

maybe hovering lifelike but painted in transparency

your mouth forever open in death’s soft moan or

morphed into grim’s henchman cloaked in black

empty eye sockets and decaying skeleton feet

all faceless because already i’m forgetting you

III

you’re dead today and

i made myself write it so many times because

i know i need to believe reality

but this is just as impossible as it was

before i wrote you a cold meaningless poem that

if you were alive as i still think you are as you should be

would make you twist a cold meaningless smirk

but that doesn’t matter nothing does because

you’re dead today