i realize now i was helpless to you
i skipped along side you,
always keeping my eyes on yours
and believeing you were happy
i retold adventures,
added climaxes to bring you in,
and strung jokes along to make you smile.
but you were more complex
than my world allowed me to see
in our silences, i studied you
tried desperately
to make sense of you,
to translate you into something i could grasp
but i could no better understand you
than a free man
can understand the burden of oppression.
your pain was something i could not
imagine
so i imainged instead, you were something
you were not.
i am not sure when exactly i first saw it
in our years together, i had failed to recognize
the emptiness behind your eyes.
or maybe the emptiness appeared
when i wasn't looking.
by the time i reached out for you
you had already drowned yourself
in the black endlessness of your
own tears.
your hands, lifelessly reaching out
below dark waters
you looked up to me as if to say,
so long friend--
you missed your chance.
