just a few things from the last week
---
on the plane I apologized to Remus for not having a window seat, I told him that we wouldn't have to listen to my music if he actually let me add more to his playlist, I asked him if there was anything he wanted me to play, I didn't ask him how he was doing.
I know better, at this point. not to never ask, or never say, but - you know. sometimes he lets me closer than anyone in the park, than basically anyone, and that's more than enough. we do what we can for our kids, and we do what we can for the dead.
the hard part is when he lets me in accidentally. like texting with Chester the other day; he wrote not a personal favourite, and he sat in my chair and laughed and was - fine, and something like or exactly like bleach poured down his back without him having to feel it. death doesn't remove trauma, any more than time does, but the two together seem to do something strange to it at times. not always, but sometimes.
I looked away from the memory, but not quite fast enough, and now that's another thing he knows that I know.
---
Joe looks pained when I ask him how it's going.
"The new guy is pissed off and his weapon of choice is the Chipmunks Christmas song."
Later that day, Raine is the one who suffers when I discover that there is a Chipmunks version of Call Me. I wouldn't say that it's my weapon of choice, though, as I am also receiving severe psychic damage from its existence.
---
I'm up at 2am with a fever and reading poetry, as one does, so Mark comes by to see whether I'm just reading or attempting some kind of esoteric self harm. Sort of both, but he can't sleep either so he sits and reads with me.
I'm going through Gav's copy of Atlantis because if I don't reread Homo Will Not Inherit I'm going to have a stroke or something. Mark had read the Mark Doty in Poets for Life, but not more. We read Love, / little pilot flame, flickering, / listen: I've been no one / so many times I'm not the least afraid.
And Mark says, again, that he didn't let me see him at the end. It was just what happened, but then he had to pick it up again, and now he can't drop it. He says read the tarot for me, then, but there's no answer, because we're alone in my room.
When he goes back whatshisname has also returned from wherever he was, and eventually I think they both sleep.
---
Richard's impatient to watch more of the hockey show, less because it's up his alley - it's too serious, honestly - and more because he just really misses Dylan. Both Dylans.
And Zeke, obviously. And his lady friend. And the Bobs.
"Everybody leaves me," and he collapses back onto his couch even though he's not wearing his fucking Golden Girls robe and can't be bothered to day drink.
Sometimes I can hear his boys, but this time he just laughs and tells me that Max was like, you should be so lucky.
