I signed the papers with ink like blood and soul. Binding. I wish I could remember the names and the order in which the meds were removed until all that was left was the morphine drip on the steady increase. I cannot recall whether or not your kidneys stopped before your heart. (I believe your heart went last. You held on so long, grasping.)

I told you, speaking in hushed tones..when you finally had no choice...that you had to go. You could not speak, your throat swallowing painfully with the ulcers then finally not at all. But your eyes wept slow tears down a stubbled cheek. Oh my god, but your eyes pled desperately, bore through me with the words you could not form.

No more suffering, no more pain. But I still see clearly that I killed you. It's your body rotting in the earth. And I have no right to want...anything so much as I do...to feel...to be...beautiful.

Came across a random topic just. So innocent. I was there for the lightness of being and I stepped into a pocket deep and still. Once my heart beat weakened I looked deeper...I know, I know, your dead, get over it, but your frailty of body and mind, and your strength of will to live...sigh...yes, Bubba, of course I cried...but I find the strangest things to make me smile - though sometimes it's just a funny grimace and bearing of teeth. I'm still missing you...and the way you talked about men and rolled your eyes.

I
I am at odds. I move around you on tip-toe, through time and space, trying to find me. And yet, I feel beautiful enough to weep. I am lost and you are angry. I care - for others. It is the price of friendship, and no, I never realized I need more than you. More than me. I am selfish, I want that which I cannot define.

II
Words trip lightly out of mouth and onto the page. I pull them from dreams and visions and reality. They are forms as yet unacknowledged, there since the twilight when the dreamscape fades. I don't know what they all mean, they are simply there - fact and fiction, all my thoughts and all my dreams.