To Nathan

I think about you sometimes and
it’s all too clear you’re probably dead.
You weren’t an icon of stability
back when we used to speak,
your bald and elongated skull
reminding me of a criminal
my mother used to know
(not to use phrenology).

You wrote dark poetry
and were the reason why
the underground started to give
warnings of extreme themes.
If I was older then I might
have been more curious
and asked the pertinent questions,
less wrapped up in my own traumas.

I thought perhaps some scary man
had made you squirm once when
you were too young to know yourself,
forever imprinting himself on you.
The weeds clinging to barbed wire,
the sun-soaked walkways of your home…
these images recur to me. The missing
finger on your hand; guitar, wheelchair.

It’s all gone now, at least for me,
and I can’t say I’m less without.
But still your brokenness lingers,
and I wonder what became of you.