Always The Wonder

I hope you’re laughing,

wherever you are.

I hope that the sun is warm on you

and that the light is getting in.

I’m having dreams about your face. About your children.

About everyone you left behind.

My rage wakes me sobbing, my corporeal body weak –

and you, somehow bodiless.

They say you are part of the magnificent unknowable, now;

an angel,

the protector of us all.

All I know is this:

I would give anything to meet you again

for the first time,

children on a bus through a hot and starless Memphis night,

your big smile and that laugh,

the one ringing through the hallways of my sleep,

the one that disarms my rage even now.

I would give anything to be children on the phone together,

our parents’ landlines memorized,

you telling me,

arrogant and joyful, that

we’d live forever.

I hope you’re dancing,

wherever you are.

I hope you’re waiting for me in a studio somewhere,

your arms tracing port de bras as you stand at a barre in your socks,

the joy never having gone out of it,

the light eternal,

the embrace of that magnificent unknowable

careening around you.

I hope that when it’s time,

I will walk up behind you and wrap my arms around you

and that your smell will be the same. We’ll talk

like children again,

about beauty and violence and wonder,

always

the wonder.