SUMMIT

did you want to die?

Your eyes have become my own.
I am looking around, and wondering
if this is how you saw the nature
of this man-made and natural world
this whole time. How many years I
have stood next to you, weathering
one storm over another, and never
understood who you really are?

Where your mind really goes, when
no one is around, when the city lights
fade out to the open road, a two way
lone and long overnight haul. I guess
I never really listened, or asked, about
what double life you lived when no one
was watching, and only the mountains--the
steep roads, and the rest stops, and the
gas stations, and that random soul at the
small-town cafe you stood in--were they
the ones that really knew you?

I still feel mad but my anger simmers,
and I know that it's the tip of the watery
tears I can't bring myself to feel. I feel
mad that you never gave me a real chance
to understand you.

Do you want to know where my mind
goes? I feel like there were road signs,
and papers maps, and compasses, and
marked trails showing where you were
heading. And I feel upset and distraught
that I didn't just ask where you were going.
If you were okay.

Did you want to die? Did you want to keep
living? I don't know. Everyone is telling me
what you wanted, and where you were going...
but you didn't tell me. I don't think I can rely
on believing what others tell me about you
when I never heard it from you.

I remember in one of what would be
our last conversations, you talked about
how when you were a young boy, one of
your favorite activities was laying down
in the grass in the small town you dreamed
of leaving, and you would look up at the
stars and the constellations, and you would
contemplate the world, and life, and everything
that ever has been and ever would be.

And now I'm in the mountain 
thoughts of my small town, and
you've got me reflecting on the
same things.