Me, My Shadow Self and I

I really think this weather is starting to mess with me. Yesterday and today I've been acutely aware of my shadow self, or maybe I've just been fueling it to exist in my conscious world. I can't really explain the kind of mood I've been in lately, it's not necessarily a bad mood, I'm not sad or angry, if I had to describe it I feel closest to actually being void of any emotion. It's because tomorrow will come again, just like it has, like it always will. I just can't believe it's been four years now. Four years since I've last seen or talked to you. It's funny, when someone dies you know that logically you'll never see them again. Not at family birthdays, not at graduations, or any more Christmases. After the second year it was like you'd just gone on vacation, or moved to the Philippines, as so many retired Filipinos do...or rather, did at your age. There's not a day that goes by that I don't wonder what my life would be like if you were still here, with me. You were my voice of reason. One look at you and I'd know what to do in any situation, especially what to do with my life. Sure, we all feel lost at some point, it's only human, but this week has been especially difficult without you. Once tomorrow passes I know I'll pull myself out of this, like I always do. It seems these days I'm the only person I can rely on.

Flowers by BORN

Irving Park pages of a tattered book
this, no my, biography is easily
recalled like a finger on page follows
words, familiar.

Alone in my car eyes fixed on red, stopped
as cracked windows welcome breezes from
my childhood, strapped in the backseat of
my grandfather's car.

Scattered plastic footballs, open carton of
golden happiness with "M" handled handles,
pigtailed sectioned hair blows freely. A
rearview-mirror-happen-

glancing, gentle eyes
smile the kind of love not unloved.

Eyes fixed on red fixes on green, gas. West
Coast Video blurs to a Block, the H&R kind
of Block. Crossing Kedzie nearing Kimball, red
signals stop.

3336 W. Irving Park Road cracks in the side
walk stained crimson, cracks of head against
pavement, the Friday of that week lasted
longest, spilling in an isosynchronous Saturday
too soon. Flowers by BORN, what's in a name?

Eddies of cracks course vein-like through
city streets. Breaks in concrete print in unknown
fonts on blank pages unscripted.

___

I'm not sure if it's appropriate to say your death was beautiful. Or perhaps, it was ironic, but there's beauty in irony isn't there? I don't know if I should cry or smile because you had plans to garden that day, or because it was Earth Day, or because you suffered a fatal heart attack right outside a florist.

You're a part of the reason for the lotus on my back, a reminder that through the mud and dirt, you've always seen me through, and I owe it to you to flourish.