Letting Go

[st_crispins]

Now that he’s gone,
You ask what he was to me:
Well.
Let me see.

He was what I was,
And was not.
And knew what I knew,
And what I did not.

We were born and raised a half a world apart,
But later formed in the same womb.
United by blood, but we were not brothers;
We were more than that.

We shared dreams, but not fantasies.
Fears, but not nightmares.
He felt when I thought,
And thought, when I felt too much.

His silences spoke to me
And his words made my silences possible.
When he spoke to others, I didn’t listen.
I didn’t have to.

He wanted more from life than I did,
But was often content when I was not.
He laughed more than I did,
But railed against Fate, when I would not.

We knew what others whispered, imagined,
And we smiled because it was beside the point.
To be joined physically
Would have been redundant.

We were already one:
Brain, mind, heart, soul.
We weren’t lovers
But we loved.

We held each other close at arm’s length,
And reached past death to grasp at life.
A thousand times my hand gripped his,
And still does,
Though he has long since let mine go

And has not.