Here it is a Friday Night in Los Angeles, and While Friends are Out Partying, I’m Sitting at Home Alone, Imagining My Death…

The initial separation is the hardest thing.

The tearing away from flesh, bone, and old habits.

A corrosion of loss clots in my still unformed wings.

Somewhere a woman’s kiss lingers in my ghostly remains of memory.

The kiss smells of gardenia.

At least I can remember that much.

Remember that much of my life.

Even in death there will be these things I will always remember.

I will never die of forgetting.

As I rise, I twist in the wind.

Second-sight staggering behind, as I look down to witness the one I once was.

The one now crumpled alongside a lonely desert road.

Heaped and fouled in a pool of blood, I have a voice answering only to carrion.

It is only now that I want to erase my name.

Completely turn myself inside out until I resemble the morphine serenity of dreamed-upon clouds.

But no matter how hard I try, all I can do is float higher.

Brushing past bird wing and the sun’s roaming gold, a pained smile comes to my face.

This lightness, this gradual rising is almost too much for me to bear.

Though soon comes calm.

And with this calm, no more fear.

No more fear of death; all this breaking from blood, body and time.

Again I smell gardenia.

That woman’s kiss lingering somewhere in my ghostly remains of memory.

I am comforted to realize that at least I can remember that much.

Remember that much of

Even in death there will be these things I will always remember.

I will never die of forgetting.