I don’t remember what I was told

 

when I was eight years old

 

and my grandfather died

 

and his body was cremated so it was no longer

 

a big body made small by cancer but a smaller body

 

made insignificant by fire.

 

I might have been told he was sleeping

 

and I might have been waiting

 

in the rain at his funeral,

 

watching the gold colored urn of him

 

being placed into a marble wall,

 

waiting for him to wake up

 

and become big again.

 

I might have, in my little blue suit

 

and black patent leather shoes,

 

hoped that something, the sound of the rain,

 

or an angel made out of wet grass and wet pine needles

 

and the wet faces of the mourners, would wake him up.

 

Tonight, I just want Richard to wake up.

 

I want to be a smoker again

 

and pull a lighter out of my back pocket

 

and light the cigarette I just bummed from him

 

while we stand close together under the evergreen

 

in Vermont

 

that shot straight up through the rain and clouds.

 

I want him to wake up and re-enter the gore of his body,

 

its pink and gray anatomy,

 

and find some clothes and find some shoes

 

and walk across the earth and sit next to me.

 

And sit next to Connie

 

and sit next to Ellen and sit next to Sue

 

and sit next to Trinie, Nick, Marie, and Michael, too.

 

And if he’s too tired from being dead for three days

 

I’ll go to him, naked in the undressing of my mind.

 

Right now, my children are sleeping

 

and will one day be dead in their lives.

 

Right now I am halfway through my life

 

and I will be dead, as dead as a mouse,

 

as dead as any other creature.

 

Right now, the only life I want back

 

is Richard’s life.

 

I want the god of horizons and the god of lodestones

 

and the god of drawbridges and caravans and mangers

 

and money and mascara and dildos

 

and the god of ships

 

and fish and eggs and earthquakes and the god

 

of all kinds of things wanted

 

to breathe him back and body him back

 

and carry him back because,

 

oh lord I loved him.

 

But if he can’t come back.

 

If he can’t ever wake up again,

 

then I want nothing but his absence.

 

I want that absence whole and warm and alive.

 

I want to be able to sit next to it and hug it

 

and talk about the shitty morning I had

 

when I dropped the last of the milk

 

and how it poured across the floor

 

and how my youngest sat

 

in front of his dry bowl of cereal

 

and looked at me

 

and how I looked out the kitchen window just then

 

and saw nothing.

 

No sky, no trees, no birds, no rain,

 

no cars, no yard, not even a neighbor's house.