When my dad died, I wrote you a letter that had been writing itself for a while and I should have read enough stories to know that everything that is alive can lie but I was lying on the couch in the lobby outside the ICU and thinking of Deathcab lyrics while the Doctor talked about dying like it was a coffee shop opening in a few hours so I took a pen and a paper towel and began to do what I am good at, that is, turn hay into something else: Hey, I’m not sure if this will ever get to you but–I can’t remember the last time so I’ll make it up: we were at a party and being told by the music to party like, like it’s the end of the world. I was drinking something blue from a plastic cup. Blue like a whiteboard marker drawing circles or the fist I know you threw me in your mind when I said I’ll walk home, asshole. The car was burgundy like a hospital gown. I’m writing to say sorry–-or so the letter went. My father had a fever. His knees were mountain tops. I’m sorry like a driveway or a fishbowl. I watch a french girl laugh. Lines are just lines. The tubes were tunnels. I chase the line, try to write before it disappears. Your hands haunt me like a short movie. I’m writing to say: it was tugging at me like a reel running through light. The French say fin, I say fever. What I mean to say is: I forgive you like the ocean or a highway or a film or everything else that slips past.

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This is also in Spoken Word format here