No Answer Is An Answer

I can count on one hand the number of times I've flown home in the last 12 years. It's rare, it's awful, it's stepping foot on hostile territory I still don't know how to navigate.

And most of my old-time friends are dead.

I still clock that ache, the loss all hollow and miserable, mourning a million possible outcomes that'll never bear fruit. If I follow that rabbit hole of loss down, I become feral with hurt. Nothing is safe from my bared fangs as long as my wound seeps, and only the anguish caused by my superiority over all things will pack the wounds tighter than gauze.

When the world loses the quality of men like Bret, like Joshua, Keith, Jason & Andre*, people I can touch in my mind's eye, and them as being some of the first boys who could love someone who didn't have the grace to love themselves. To render such kindness without having been asked to give it, and then get taken out by suicide, bad batches, hot shots & misadventure I can't fathom, the whole goddamn planet should mourn the loss of such unique and too infrequent mutants among our ranks.

I miss those lovely young men I keep so close in my heart, because the privilege of the corporeal form isn't granted forever.

*If I sat here longer, the list would grow. I refuse to break my own heart today.