It snowed the night Robert died
dropped like ash tears upon
my cheek, coat and arm.
Soft flakes fell
as if in a dream
for in dreams we believe
the pale blue light
spiraling upon and around us:
that we are immortal.
The sky shook in my arms
saying, Robbie, Robbie
as we watched those white tears fall
from the seventh floor of St. Vincent’s
and caught on the memory
of an old streaked photograph
two boys in bunny suits
tails and all.
In our dreams
the soft azure ocean would swallow
and we would feel it still in our waking.
The respirator filled his lungs
and I watched, with flecks in my eyes,
as my best friend, partner and lover
poured in years through the tubes
and it all became one night,
one sleep
of luminous clouds
that float with light.
The first frost of the season
too early, only October
and snow shouldn’t have come for weeks
but here, whirled with the weary smell
and monitored machines bouncing black,
your heirloom and inheritance –
all perfect,
one slow dance.
Then it was gone,
like a comet that burned incandescent
entering the earth’s atmosphere.
Snowflakes dropped and melted
into the pavement
and his blood pressure swooped flat.
You looked at me as if my presence
told this story,
the unfolding of a man I never knew.
I shook the bodiless snow from my face
held his swollen limbs
with a tenderness shared between us,
and understood emptiness.
We believe in the demons
that haunt the day:
the pearl of snow so brief
it could have been imagined,
and the window between death and dreams.
