Half-asleep, we clung to the other's breath in the silence. Your eyes were city lights on a long stretch of highway, glowing as youth molded us into lovers who believed in things like “forever.”

But I remember the weight of diagnosis, the expiration date above your head, the promises we made to each other, saying “I won't let you die” as if we could control mortality and the slow, mournful progression of a time that would not bend to our whims. I remember your trembling, your trying not to cry. In our fevered daydreams we reached out, (thinking we could reason with God and tumors and chemo), and as your body began to waste away I held on and said “I will keep you here.”

You gave me a locket filled with your breath and your sweetest smiles and our late-night adventures and I begged like a child don't—please, don't take him and your arms were thin, and the bones were beginning to show but your eyes were empty fields and dreamcatchers, all hopscotch and knobby knees and sand after the rain and I could not imagine a life without those things.

You made me promise that I'd finish my book, and I made you promise not to leave me and you laughed, told me not to fear death – that it was like silence and the tide after the storm, that it was a whisper, and I screamed and cried and stomped my feet, weaving arms around your ankles and humming a few bars of “Song for a Seagull” and you just laughed again; hummed a few bars of “The Last Dance.”

And we drove aimlessly for days; nights measured by bright eyes and gas-station mirrors and the sickly smell of your skin and you promised to stay with me somehow, promises promises promises, and I told you stories woven with bits of greed and despair; held together with some lanyards you made at camp and the ribbons in my hair. There was that wheat-field, sequestered from the city like the last great Eden, where I spoke to you the only way I knew how – with great distance.

You told me that talking to God helped, but every time I tried folding my hands I thought of nothing else but rain and wind and fire, and you told me “He's not a tyrant” but I couldn't believe you even as I bargained my life for yours. And sitting, thinking maybe I could stop death just made me more angry and sad as I pictured your body in the river with hands laid over you, white garments and ghost-kisses and Oh! The Glory of Him from which all good things come! And if they could baptize you like my brother baptized our dog in the toilet, maybe they could save you and when your parents prayed over your body, I shut my eyes tightly and tried to make myself believe, thinking that maybe if I believed it would save you. “I'm no good at that stuff,” I told you, “but I love you. Isn't that enough?” and you held me tightly and always laughing, always laughing, stop laughing, What are you laughing for? told me that it was alright. That love was enough.

Love was enough.

And when they laid you out I imagined myself inside your stilled chest – heart empty, eyes full, scribbling our names entwined a thousand times in notebooks ,and I pictured swimming in Lake Michigan and living without you and every blurry picture of you spilling out from a box at the bottom of the stairs like river-stones and the cardinals were singing

the cardinals were singing.

I had a dream that night. You came and told me what Heaven was like, and you told me to tie those pretty yellow ribbons in my hair and dance,

and the phone call came; woke me up and opened my eyes and by the time your father whispered into the phone I was already crying heart empty, eyes full from months of saying goodbye to the way I knew you, and preparing for the absence didn't make it any easier to weather

but when I think of you, you are smiling.

(c)