Odd how the darkness always makes us whisper
and with the last of the sun
you can feel the approach of the winter
Now is the time of each day
that I Desperately miss her
I suppose I will learn how to live my life without her.
- Come Calling, Cowboy Junkies, Lay it Down
I miss you. I miss your laughter and I miss your anger. I miss your hair and I miss the flecks in your eyes. I miss how very well you knew me. I miss the absurd luxury of the option to return your phone calls. Every day I think of you. Every. Single. Day. You do not haunt me but you have not left me, and I will never let you go. It has been years now, soon it will be ten. I talk about you often and friends worry that I still grieve, saying “You have to get over this.” Over this? The statement is laughable but also so ridiculous that hearing it pisses me off. I hear new music, new songwriters, and I wonder what you would think. What words would come from your mouth, say, to describe Pete Yorn? I meet new people and wonder what you would think of them. I stand still and quiet and wonder what you would think of me. I think of how happy you'd be for Gus, how you'd adore her husband and children, especially her children. You would spin magic around those girls. When I drive by your old place on Gramercy I cannot do so without glancing to your old window and sighing. Intuition whispers to me that you are the surface of every calm lake, the bow of the willow, the steam rising from a galloping horse’s chest in the winter. You’re a ball cap and blue jeans. You’re coffee. And eggs. And cheeseburgers. You’re a rope swing swaying from a high branch of an old Cypress tree on the banks of the Guadalupe river. You’re the drum beat over any dance floor. You’re a stuffed penguin. You’re La Jalience and Fairview. Austin and Houston and San Antonio. I love you. Do you know that? You are my friend and I still talk to you. All the time.
