on kurt and saying goodbye

You are deeper than the sea.

More complex, more God damn difficult,
more full of mystery and more profound
than words could ever know.
I like it that way. I do.

You drive with your eyes unfocused
until I steal a smile
when you catch me staring.
Your tattoo peeks at me from under your sleeve,
your arm tanned from our day on the beach
and the drive from Reno.

I like to look at you when you are serious
when I know you are thinking
-and likely worrying-
about money or your next pack of cigarettes
or where we will sleep tonight.

You are one of the few, you know.

One of the few that is real and true,
one who doesn’t waste words like so many people do.
You pick and choose, you don’t fill empty space with empty ideas,
and you aren’t afraid or intimidated by Silence.

Your New York accent draws a smile in the morning,
and I twirl your hair in my fingers and repeat after you.
It’s not coffee. It’s caw-fee.

You wince.

I’ll be missing you, but I think you know that.
I will miss your eyes, and the way they shine green
like emeralds.
Or something green like that.

I will miss looking left from the passenger side
and tracing your profile with mountains as backdrops
and open roads ahead.
But this is life, and life is an open road in itself.

Open roads are what connected us to begin with,
winding their way through our claustrophobic souls
until we screamed out loud to be nomads,
to live nowhere and everywhere;
to dumpster diving in Santa Cruz
and dreaming of painting curbsides in black numbers.

You will always have the road, and the road
could always lead you back to me.
Regardless, it led you TO me.
It is what it is.
For that, and for you, I am thankful.