She told me you wore your
best sweater, button-up shirt
barely opened at the neck
so as not to expose your
clavicle pushing up to
the surface of the skin.
 
She told me you had to 
wear sweatpants; 
your church pants had
seen you waste away,
even a belt unable to 
keep them attached to you.
 
She told me how pitiful
you looked laying there, 
the blue satin of the casket
swallowing what little
still remained of you.
 
Quit telling me these things
I want to yell at her.
Tell me about your first date.
Tell me about the day you 
got the call, drove to Dallas,
held me in your arms the first time.
 
I want to hear the story of 
buying your first house for
less than the price of a car,
turning that ugly box into
a home with porches, a tiny
kitchen in the middle, huge
dreams filling every room.
 
I want to remember you coming
through the back door,
clothes covered in grease,
smelling like the steel mill,
a surprise Big Red from the
vending machines at work.
 
I want to see you laying
on the floor on your back,
the hi-fi spinning out tunes
from every era imaginable,
the records dropping on top
of each other in a fat stack,
because you loved music –
words, the sounds, the memories;
the way it made you forget too.
 
These are the things she should
be telling me, the stories we
could be sharing if only…
but we never shared the
same memory of the same event.
 
She stops talking, takes a breath,
stifles her crying. We breathe together 
over the phone, our shared grief
palpable even across the cell towers in 
two different places, two separate towns, 
too distinct mornings.