Two Weeks Later
A poem + audio
The glittering lights off Caesars Palace remind me
that everything of artifice
was made from some image
in the same way
words form without reason
they are sounds but not lyrical
until they connect with images
As we are the images of some higher field of light
that helps us sleep
through life more soundly
we are such know-it-alls, knowing nothing
flailing through the darkness
two hundred years from now
there will be nothing left of you and I
only the invention of a mushroom cloud
burning through our dreams
the skin peeling off our hands
looking back, we are always wrong
even when it feels so right
Until two weeks ago I imagined
parts of my life running in a loop
an eternal return to the same themes
powering the core
as if I were a goddamn super computer
processing data endlessly
making sense of nothing
I’m not anything
but a human, as flawed as any
though I tried perfection once
God laughed
and crashed the mainframe
When I close my eyes
opening them from one moment
in time to another
the images float down
my mind to where you
are in time
Somehow, I knew that river
its name now only a sound
and that I’d never see you again
when you left me
there on the midnight side
not even to look back
how the hell were we anything
something more than just images
I hope your light played out right
my shadows no longer on your wall
What do we do with this thing we call death
what a weight we are strapped to
the banality of days
holding vigils, building monuments
Sisyphus was actually a happy man
trying to stop time from its wash
Two weeks later and I’m not completely sure
that you aren’t still alive somewhere
pretending to be dead
playing your guitar in the dark at 4 a.m.
in some other dimension
Note: Substack changed the formatting of this poem when it's viewed directly in an email. Try the website version of it for something closer to what it looked like when I was drafting it.
💔 Beautiful and moving poem, Autumn. Loved hearing you read it. Felt a real surge of emotion when I read the last five lines. I have felt that way about many people I've lost.