Boy in the sunset

A day of rain and coffee and cigarettes

rolled to its end into a sky full

of blue clouds and an acid red sunset.

I sit on the porch looking out

at it, at my life, at what I can make of it.

I live in a place I don't want to look at

anymore, or feel anymore.

I want to lose it the way I've lost everything else, like sand that slid

through my fingers. A surface just

slippery enough to grasp the things

it cannot hold.

But tonight, as I look at a sunset I

don't want to see, it smiles

something at me.

That boy is in the sky.

The boy that is the reason

I know loss and the reason

that I know love.

And he looks at me through

the clouds and it pierced me.

I have lost my brother here.

There it is looking at me, looking at me

just the way that I am,

broken, and lost, and tired.

And it finds me like this,

withered on my porch.

And the it occurs to me to see the way that beauty looks down on me,

not forgetting me, not forgetting us,

but bringing me back to you.

A moment that cannot be lost

or forgotten, but slips away nonetheless.

I remember now, how losing you

brought me here to this sunset,

your sunset.

Love.