You don’t get to tell me what I am

You can’t even see me through the fractures in your lens

On the rock beach where the blue heron stared us down one after another like the riffraff we are, loitering in his territory,

my feet grip the moss and I can smell ocean smells.

Feel ocean feels against my skin.

When I look at you, you’ve turned yourself into liquid and you glow in the water like hammered copper mixed with sunlight.

Your body ripples with the river and your long limbs sink into the pools of shadows

and suddenly I’m afraid it will swallow you in a wet yawn and spit out your bones, sinew, and hair for me to divine all alone and without you.

Instead you open your eyes and in them I can see how time has distorted and molded you.

I see where you are frayed and where you are polished.

They carried you out on a platter because you were always light as a feather

Sometimes I’ll read our old emails and feel you in my chest next to my still-beating heart.

It really bugged Charlie that they called me first to tell me you’d died.

Your sister said my business card was next to your mouse-pad, where you graded papers.

I felt like an imposter at your funeral.

I couldn’t look at you resting in that box looking every bit like you looked when they found you.

I wouldn’t meet your dad’s sad eyes.

Your mother’s hand was cold when she clutched at my hand as I fled to sit in my car and chain-smoke and listen to the rain.

I refused to follow your body to the cemetery to watch them lower you into the shadowed void they made for you in the ground.

You wouldn’t like the style of this prolonged ceremony.

You would have bolted after the first 5 minutes, without warning or apology and it would have made me laugh.

Some pretty things in nature

are deadly poisonous

Some are thorned around their delicate flesh

so you can’t get close without being pricked

Crouched in the mud,

I feel my breath

and thrashing heart

in a way that reminds me,

I’m just another animal

transplanted from womb to earth

in a rush of pain and confusion.

Did the universe make a sound when Shams and the scholar met?

What blossoms bloomed in the courtyard when they touched, cheek to cheek?

We argued on the train home

You got mad at me for crying

and then forgot

It’s really good to know.

The bad news is, you’re not a good person.
The truth is, there aren’t good or bad people because we don’t live in a comic book,

You’re capable of greatness.
You’re capable of madness.
You’re capable of so much kindness.
You’re capable of unspeakable cruelty.

You’re a human.

The good news is, now that you understand your predicament better, this new awareness will allow you to lovingly analyze and omit behaviors that don’t serve you or others.

You still won’t be a good person.
There still won’t be bad people.

We’re humans. Together.

Forever and ever, Amen.