Dead Relatives (For M-----)

You held me in your arms,

Time stood still for a year,

There are things I think I learned,

Things I think that you learned here.

But there’s nothing learned from you,

At least not at this place,

When I need a hand from Heaven,

You stop time and brighten space. 

When we were just kids you said, “Slow down before you blow up,”

Look at me now, I don’t do this for the glow up,

I write my feelings down, it helped me learn how to grow up,

Now I hurdle setbacks, just like a real grown-up.

On nights that are the darkest,

The moon illuminates the dust,

On the frame of your picture,

The stars are all that I can trust.

They tell me that you’re out there,

They shout, “Keep trying!”

They whisper, “Proud of you,”

I can’t talk back while I’m crying. 

Coming from a small town, everybody knows your dreams,

You think you’re planting flowers, but you’re really growing weeds,

There’s never been a tree to bend down and teach a seed,

How to reach for the sun and grow into a sapling. 

You disappeared like a magician,

And told me the show was now ending,

You said you had nothing left to show,

But there’s something that you’re sending

By mail, it won’t arrive until you’re gone,

Your greatest trick of all,

Was falling down in spring,

And rising up again in fall. 

Doing what I want is not doing what I should,

The times I really miss you, I wonder if you could

Warm my heart, make the fire flicker brighter

Against the softwood, until I grow into adulthood.