To End the Day in Elegy

My mom's closest friend's son died yesterday. He was only two years older than I am and I grew up with him. That was a long time ago, but not long enough to be telling him goodbye, or his mother how wrong it is and how very sorry that I am or to feel that sinking feeling again when someone who was living so well and trying so hard to be good to his body is gone. It's never a fair thing, but sometimes it's more stupid than other times. Goodbye George Klonizos and to you Rita, godmother, second Mom, I can only send love and prayers from Ohio to too-too far Utah.   And these borrowed words:

The Comet

I re-named the comet but nothing stuck. What do I know of bone-
deep lonely, of the beautiful freeze, of running a circuit through the
stars until all landmarks are my own staring eyes: of families
in general, what do I know? Say I'm young. Say I am the aftertaste
of all my parents' grief, a childhood spent in the downwind
of chicken blood, recurring dreams of being left behind—my mother
kneeling by the VCR to watch a video of her lost daughter—
and this is Hell: believing you can be a lens and meet your
loved ones' eyes beyond the screen, smacking your pain against glass
like a doomed swallow The half-life of loss is forever.There is hope
we don't get over. When my son began to die, I did not record
his voice, but let him simmer, speechless, in my memory, while I tried
to gain the faith to think we'd meet again. I held his fist against my lips,
I closed my teeth around the juncture of his throat and chest, I said
you'll be the fire of the sun, and I will circle you until you draw me close,
until our nearness breaks me into pieces and you burn me whole.
I would have ripped his heart out and consumed it if I'd thought
that it would choke me: I would have been the eternal mouth.
Say I'm young. Say the speeding rock of my body is as bright
as any resurrection, and I have time to shake before I hit the earth.

Copyright © 2012 Emma Törzs All rights reserved
from Indiana Review